300 Torchwood Drabbles
by nothing-rhymes-with-ianto
Summary: 300 drabbles of either 100, 150, or 200 words. All drabbles are 100 words unless otherwise indicated. Each drabble was inspired by a single word prompt given to me by random followers on Tumblr. All characters and all pairings are featured.
1. Chapter 1

Part 1 of my 300 Torchwood drabbles. Each was inspired by a one word prompt given to me by people on Tumblr.

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**1 Roses**

Owen and Ianto don't need roses. They know that. They've tried it before. Not with each other, of course. That would be awkward. But they remember, from years ago, when they had those women they thought they'd marry one day. Those were days for roses. Not now.

Instead, they have stitches, coffee, banter. It's still love, still deep, still overprotective and weirdly possessive. But it's not sappy romance. Torchwood isn't like that. Anyway, they work better together, when they're not dwelling on the past. They work better together when all they can see is the present, the future and each other.

**2 Window**

Ianto wakes to find the other half of the bed empty. The red glow of the alarm clock tells him it's nearly four in the morning.

Owen's shirtless body is silhouetted against the window. His arms are wrapped around his shoulders, even though it's quite warm in the flat. His head is bowed, and Ianto sees him sigh. He gets out of bed and joins the Londoner at the window, wrapping his arms around him from behind.

"He forgave you."

"But I _shot_ him. I fucking shot him, and then he left us."

"It's not your fault, Owen. We all betrayed him."

They stand together at the window, wishing on fading stars for their leader back.

**3 Unaccountable**

Ianto's heart pounded in fear every time the rest of the Torchwood team took their dinner break and left him in the Hub alone. He was terrified that they'd come back early and catch him down in the depths with Lisa, or that they'd somehow find the source for the "unaccountable" electrical surges that happened periodically when he plugged in Lisa's machine to relieve her pain for just a little while.

He was scared to death that Lisa, who by now was really only half the Lisa he'd once known, would be overtaken by the Cyberman bits that had been fused to her, and would hurt his colleagues, who he'd found himself attached to.

He was terrified that he might have to make a decision between his Lisa, and his Torchwood Three team.

**4 Joie de Vivre**

Owen and Ianto ran, laughing and snorting, across the snow-covered Plass. It had been a close shave for all of them today, nearly being crushed in a giant alien, well, crusher. Jack had saved them, of course.

Now they laughed with breathless joie de vivre brought on by the sudden closeness of mortality.

"Pew pew pew!" Owen made a gun with his fingers and pointed it at Ianto. The Welshman retaliated with a well-aimed snowball to the face.

Owen dove at him and wrestled him into the powder, where they tussled like boys, reveling in the feeling of eluding death**.**

**5 Metal**

Owen barely has to think about it before he begins to very carefully remove the metal exoskeleton from Lisa's body. Jack is long gone back to Ianto's flat, so he knows there's no one around to disturb him. He works quietly, reverently, being extremely attentive as he pries steel from skin. When he gets it all off, he cleans her up, stitches closed the tears in her skin where he wasn't able to be as precise as he wanted in taking off the metal.

He knows from experience that it feels better to have a body, no matter how mutilated, that you know exists, that you can pretend to talk to. It feels better to know that someone cares.

**6 Utopia**

Owen is lying on his back in bed, lights from the bay flickering across the ceiling. A solid shape dozes lightly beside him.

He's not sure when Ianto started staying the night, but he doesn't mind. Ianto is nice, once you get used to him. And Owen feels a great deal of affection for the Teaboy, though it comes across as snark. Ianto cleans up, keeps the flat neat, and they both feel the need for company at night, a warm body beside them, someone, anyone, to keep the loneliness at bay.

He just wonders if (_hopes that_) this will continue when (_if_) Jack returns.

**7 Rugby**

"You're telling me you live only miles away from the Millennium Stadium and you've never been to a live rugby match?" Owen asked incredulously. It was only a week after he'd been recruited and Wales was playing England the next day.

"Sorry, never have time. You won't, either, I guarantee." Jack replied.

"You've never been to a live rugby match?" Ianto gaped, three years later. "And you live here? Really?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "I don't have time. Neither do you. Now come on. Rift activity."

Ianto and Owen shrugged at each other across the Hub, miffed at the fact that their boss had never engaged in their national pastime.

**8 TARDIS**

Owen found Ianto in the furthest depths of the archives, furiously concentrating on some very boring-looking files.

"Ianto? You okay, mate?" He sat down beside the Welshman on the dirty floor. Ianto sighed and closed his eyes. He was breathing heavily through his nose.

"He found his Doctor," the young man explained. "He's not coming back. He's found what he's been waiting for all these years."

"He'll come back, you know he will." Owen tried to reassure, but he was skeptical himself. "He wouldn't leave us all alone."

Neither man knew whether Owen was reassuring one or both of them.

**9 Obtuse**

"No, I mean, I like you." Owen wonders if Kate is being deliberately obtuse, and he's growing more frustrated by the second. He throws his napkin down on the counter where they're on break, as if making a point. "I want you to go out with me!"

She laughs, a golden sound. "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?"

He growls slightly, but she laughs again and he can't help but smile. Then she leans over the table and plants a kiss on his cheek and he's pretty sure he'll never feel like this about anyone again.

**10 Melancholy**

Owen didn't know what he'd call it. Perhaps melancholy was the right word. But after Katie's death, he'd never really recovered. He remembered Before, and how he'd be happy for long stretches of time, smiling at everything, and then there was After. After, he felt nothing but sadness.

And somehow, it stayed. He'd never felt truly happy again. Perhaps it had been waiting round the corner for him since childhood, since long before his mother had kicked him out. All he knew was that the sadness prevailed, and he'd never been able to really feel joyful and content ever again.

**11 Pug**

"You are not keeping it here." Ianto insisted.

"But—"

"I'm the one who cleans up this Hub and takes care of all living residents. That thing is going end up like Pusskers the cat."

"What happened to her, anyway?"

"See?" he sighed. "She hid under furniture for a few weeks. Then one day she decided to get brave. Myfanwy ate the poor thing."

"Oh…"

"So if you want that pug to end up like Pusskers, go ahead. But I suggest you give it to the patients at Flat Holm to take care of. It'll survive longer."

"I…fine."

"Sorted, then. Coffee?"

**12 Search**

Some nights Ianto climbs up to the roof of the Millennium Centre, stands where he knows Jack loves to stand, and stares up at the sky, searching the stars for some sort of sign that Jack is out there, and that he's going to come back to them.

Sometimes Tosh or Owen or even Gwen joins him, and they gaze up into the night, making half-hearted comments about "should've brought a telescope up," but they never do.

It would hurt too much to look too closely at the stars. It would solidify the knowledge that Jack isn't in this galaxy. And it would just make it all the more clear that he isn't coming back.

**13 Apophenia**

At first Ianto wonders if he's somehow gotten his wires crossed while talking to Owen. He wonders if he's making something out of nothing.

But Owen is talking nicer to him, thanking him for coffee, brushing fingers with his as he takes a proffered medical tool from his hand, and looking at him for reassurance and answers instead of Jack.

So when he corners Owen one evening on the way up to the car park, he's not surprised when the medic, instead of yelling, leans in and kisses him hard on the mouth. Ianto doesn't mind, though. He kisses back.

**14 Schadenfreude**

Owen and Ianto's relationship had always existed with a tinge of brotherly schadenfreude. An insult here, a wad of spit in a coffee mug there, but really, they were family. Family that communicated through banter, insults and tussles, but family all the same.

When Ianto had a headache for a few days, Owen laughed at him, told him to lay off the "innovative" sex with Jack so he wouldn't get knocked around so hard.

But when the migraine went on for several weeks, suddenly the thought of his surrogate brother being injured terrified him. He would do anything to keep him from danger.

**15 Defenestration (Double-drabble)**

He and Jack have been standing in the top floor of the abandoned building for too many long minutes. Ianto stopped counting a while back. He doesn't know how to react.

Jack has simply been standing, stock-still, staring dumbly at a pair of metal shackles that lie upon the floor. Ianto doesn't recognize them, but it's obvious that Jack does, and they hold some deep, insurmountable fear for him. He's hypnotized by the cuffs, shaking, eyes fixed wide and stance rigid with terror. His body is tense with what Ianto recognizes as Jack's position for some sort of sense memory of pain. Agony, he realizes, Jack is never as locked as this.

A whimper comes from his mouth, a sound like "_Master_," and suddenly Ianto understands. In a movement swift with rage and protective, love-made fury, he grabs up the chains and heaves them out of the window. Jack sags as if strings holding him up had been cut. Ianto runs to him to hold him up. Jack's face is in the crook of his neck, Ianto can feel his skin dampening with tears.

"Thank you," Jack whispers into his ear, voice hoarse and pained. Ianto just tightens his hold.

**16 Abscission (Double-drabble)**

There are nights when Jack wakes up from a nightmare-memory, death after death, faces and faces of lovers and loved and strangers all lost, and bolts from his confined bunker as quick as he can with disturbing Ianto's slumber.

He practically claws his way up to the roof of the Millenium Centre, and stands there, staring up at the stars. In these moments, he just wants to cut Ianto out of his life completely, remove the achingly large part of his heart dedicated to the Welshman, just to spare the pain on both of their parts.

He wants Ianto to leave, leave now, leave forever, leave fast, so he can forget all this and go live a safe, happy life in Newport or Abergavenny or Pontypridd, with no knowledge of the darkest depths of pain and suffering that he knows Ianto has experienced in his young life. He wants to cut Ianto off forever, so he won't ever get hurt and won't ever leave.

Then a sleepy figure appears on the Plass, a dark shape, and Jack realizes he's too greedy to ever make the Welshman leave, too gluttonous for his adoration and trust and acceptance. Too much in love.

**17 Rainy**

Owen can remember the day his mother kicked him out. It was raining. It was grey. He was seventeen and a half.

There was a screaming match before he managed to wrestle the bags out of his mum's hands, just before she tossed them out into the wet. He slept in a bus station that night.

The next day, he took all of his money and asked for a dorm room at the University. He'd already gotten in, and though it wasn't a new school year yet, the head of dormitories took pity on him after hearing his story, and let him have the smallest single. He took it gratefully.

**18 Suzie**

When Suzie came back, Owen felt nothing except a slight nervousness. It wasn't any sort of "Oh shit, an ex" nervousness or something along those lines. Instead, it was a Torchwood-ingrained instinct that she was _wrong_.

It felt odd to him that he felt nothing toward her. He usually felt something, anything, towards the women had affairs with, and especially towards his colleagues. Yes, he knew they'd been using each other for sex. But he felt some sort of emotion for everyone, even Tosh and Ianto. But for Suzie, there was nothing. What kind of person did that make him?

**19 Gesundheit**

Toshiko is sneezing all over the place. Ianto's graced her with a "gesundheit" thirty-seven times in the last three hours. He counted. On the way out to get lunch for everyone, he stops by the store and buys her a box of extra-soft tissues, which she thanks him for profusely. He gives her a sympathetic smile.

"It's allergies," she explains, embarrassed.

"You know, I could cure those for you," Jack offers. "We've got the tech. In my time, allergies didn't even exist."

"Thanks Jack, but I'd prefer to stay imperfect and 21st century." Toshiko replies.

Ianto is inclined to agree.

**20 Disclosure (Double-drabble)**

Owen tripped backward on the stairs in the archives, yanking Ianto's half of the artifact from his hands and falling to the ground. The artifact cracked open beside Owen's head and smoke shrouded his face. He coughed, spluttered, before sitting up straight and going still.

"Shit." Ianto slammed his hand on the button to lockdown the archives.

He sat down beside the medic. "Are you all right?"

"Devastation." Ianto looked up into the medic's face. His eyes were bright with tears, glazed over as if in a trance.

"What?"

"Heartbreak. Guilt. Anger. Loneliness. Hurt. Jealousy."

"Owen? What are you talking about?"

The speaker clicked overhead and Jack's voice came through. "It's a full disclosure device. He'll tell you about strong emotions evoked by certain events. It's meant as a therapy device. Sorry. Get him comfortable. With his past, he'll be talking for a while."

Ianto stared at his colleague. Then he heaved Owen to his feet and sat him in a chair, where he stared at his knees, tears spilling down his grimacing face.

"I'm sorry, Owen."

"Diane. Katie. Mum. Love. Devastation. Heartbreak. Guilt. Anger. Loss. Loneliness."

Suddenly Owen looked up, straight into Ianto's eyes. "Ianto. Friendship. Confidant. Brother. Help."

**21 Semiotics (Double-drabble)**

Down in the archives, Ianto studies handwriting. Mostly Jack's, Owen's and Tosh's, because they're alive, because he knows them, and because he likes them.

Owen's handwriting starts out shaky, slanting left, heavy pressure. Owen was still hurting from Katie's death, still confused by this new and crazy job. After a while it morphs into what he knows now, upright letters, squashed together, heavy pressure, spiky and messy.

Tosh's starts out shaky as well, but light, spread out and tiny. He remembers her telling him about UNIT. He can tell she was nervous when she first got out. Soon it changed to what he knows know: spread out and tiny, with medium pressure, leaning right.

Jack's changes most. First it's shaky, uncertain, like a child's, and Ianto realizes suddenly that English is not Jack's first language, that he had to learn the language, and quickly. Then it's the looping cursive of the old days, leaning right, heavy pressure. It's more modern after a while, but stays looping and old, Ianto knows how Jack likes nostalgia.

It's amazing what handwriting says about a person. Ianto is glad he can learn about his friends this way, knowing them without ever having to ask.

**22 Cosset (Drabble and a half)**

It's strange, Owen coming over every night, bringing with him beer or takeout or a movie. Caring for him. It's nice, though. Helps him keep his mind off of Lisa.

They talk little, and when they do, it's about mundane stuff. Nothing too deep, nothing that could trigger any sort of emotion. Owen helps him into bed at night and sometimes sleeps on the couch, but not usually. They barely speak about their own lives. Until just a week before Ianto's suspension is up.

They're slightly drunk, and Ianto just says "Why?" and suddenly Owen is telling him all about Katie and about losing her and about his devastation and emptiness and her laugh echoing in his ears and his loneliness. And suddenly there's kinship and understanding. They turn away from each other and cry about their lost loves, though they stay in the same room, seated on the same couch.

**23 Finagle**

Somehow (even he doesn't really know how he does it), Owen always manages to finagle his way out of fights. Fights with his mum's stupid boyfriends when he was a kid, fights with classmates in med school, fights with drunk blokes in the bars, fights with their drunk girlfriends.

It's definitely not because of his size, or his looks. Maybe it's because he's got that fierce emotion behind his eyes, the look of a man who's lost it all, a man who's only got one thing left and he knows it won't ever let him go. Reckless. Loss protects him.

**24 Toy Shop**

Ianto gets weird looks when he walks in the toy shop. His suit is slightly dirty, and he's got cuts on his knuckles and a scrape across his chin.

But he needs to buy something for Mica's birthday, so he ignores the teenage girl scowling at him from the register and heads towards the games. He knows Mica likes those little PSP games. He'll get her an educational one so Rhiannon won't yell at him.

For just a brief moment, he has a vision of himself with a kid, Lisa still alive, or maybe Jack somehow okay with domesticity. Then he remembers, he's Torchwood.

**25 Honey**

When Gwen calls him "honey" or "sweetheart," Ianto always has to suppress a shudder. He hates hearing those endearments. His mum used to call him that, before she left to that place with all those strange people, those white walls, those still figures.

Ianto knows now it was Providence Park, but back then it was just "the ghostie building," a whole institution full of people like ghosts.

Her voice still rings in his head, mingled with the sounds of his father, who blamed him for her bad health and her subsequent death by suicide.

He can't bear to hear those words.

**26 Castle**

As they drive hurriedly to the abandoned Torchwood One warehouse, Rhys cracks a joke that they should've chosen Cardiff Castle as their new base.

This produces a good laugh, and suddenly, everyone feels a little better. Jack, still naked, puts an arm around Ianto's shoulders and chuckles.

"We did use it as a base for a little while, back in the 1800s. Then they started rebuilding and tearing walls down. We decided we should get the hell out before someone discovered us."

"WHAT?!" Gwen and Rhys exclaim together, eyes wide.

"It's true," Ianto deadpans from the back seat. Jack smirks.

**27 Doctor**

He's just come back from the goddamn Marianas Trench and he's slightly scared of the dark. He's walking from his car to his flat when footsteps make him stop. He pulls his gun, ready. The footsteps near and he spins—

"Woah!" He steadies the gun. "Ianto, hold on!"

"Who are you?" He lowers the gun only a fraction.

"I'm the Doctor." The gun goes back up. "I'm not here to take Jack. I need you."

"Why?" Ianto is wary.

"I need you to meet a very old friend of mine. It's important, for you and for him. And for Jack."

**28 Confused (Drabble and a half)**

When Jack first sees the blinking light on his wrist strap, he will be filled with confusion. It won't have done that for nearly a hundred linear earth years. He'll stare at it for a few long moments before he will press the button.

Gwen's face will appear in front of him, projected in blue. Her eyes will be wide and eager and she will be smiling.

"Jack," She will say. "You need to come back. I don't know how long it's been for you, but it's only been eight months for me and something wonderful has happened." She will look offscreen and chuckle, then turn back to Jack. "And no, it's not the fact that I had my baby."

Suddenly, another smiling face will fill the screen and Jack will gasp and bite his tongue and hold back tears.

"Ianto's alive!"

Jack will teleport home that instant.

"Jack!"

"Ianto..."

**29 Eyeshadow**

The first time Ianto sees him fully decked out— corset, heels, eyeshadow and all, he's creeped out. He doesn't care that it's for that Rocky Horror Picture Show thing in town. It's weird-looking on Jack.

The second time, however, he takes a closer look. The stockings hug Jack's legs gracefully, the corset gives him a nearly feminine curve. The eyeshadow compliments and defines the arch of his brow. Suddenly Ianto is overcome with need, and crushes Jack to the wall, plundering his mouth and shoving his hands down lacy underwear.

He doesn't care if he gets lipstick on his suit.

**30 Health**

It's your job. You make sure the team is healthy, you make sure they heal well from their injuries or sicknesses. It's your job. Your job is also to dissect aliens that come through, victims, whatever. It's a thankless job, really. Despite how it may seem, you really do work incredibly hard. It's a thankless job.

Except when Ianto's around, because he knows. He's got a thankless job, too. And he thanks you with a quiet murmur, or in his own silent way with treats or first-rate coffee. You're not really here for thanks, but you're glad someone gets it.

**31 First Times (Double-drabble)**

The first time they kissed, it was mostly accidental. No one knew who started it. They were arguing about who was guiltier, about Ianto shooting Owen, when suddenly they were kissing, tongues battling. Owen pulled back, punched him in the face, hard. Then, before he was done reeling, pulled him back in and kissed him quick before stomping off.

The first time they fucked was the night Tosh had been nearly killed. Ianto showed up at Owen's doorstep looking traumatized. Owen yanked him inside and crushed their mouths together. They fucked on the bed, Owen's hands fisting hard in Ianto's hair as his hips pistoned.

The first time they professed real feelings for each other was in the Himalayas. Gwen had disappeared. Tosh's body was laid out on the other side of the tent. Owen was lying on Ianto's lap, shivering and coughing. He'd gotten frostbite after losing a glove, and now infection had spread. Owen coughed for a long time, and when he looked up at Ianto, his eyes were fading.

"Teaboy? I just want you to know that I love you."

"Owen…please don't. Don't leave me."

"Ianto, please."

"I love you too. I really do."

The medic went still.

**32 Cerulean**

Jack loved one particular planet. Of course, sometimes, he absolutely hated it, too. It was called Azural. It was blue, the purest blue. Its inhabitants were intelligent and peaceful and they welcomed him.

Sometimes, he went there and stayed for months, basking in the cerulean colour that let him sit awash with memories. And sometimes, he ran, fast and far, unable to stand the all too familiar blue that induced too many regrets. And some days he just wanted to fly up in his ship and orbit the planet, staring at the sphere as if staring into the eyes of the man he promised never to forget.

**33 Osteria (Double-drabble)**

Once, after he left earth, after his Vortex Manipulator was restored (ah, he loved rogue Time Agents!), Jack went to Italy. At first it was just because he'd never been, and he'd always been partial to the language and especially the food. He chose 1922, because he remembered liking that time period quite a lot. Not quite as much as the forties, though.

He made his way to an attractive _osteria_ and sauntered inside. It was loud, but full of warmth and life and good smells, something Jack often missed when travelling in the stars. He smiled.

Suddenly, a familiar movement caught his eye and he turned, stopped. A young man, slightly dirty, sallow, the beginnings of a goatee on his chin, and a strange red marking in the white of his eye, stood over a crowded table, laughing and talking with friends in rapid Italian.

Jack sucked in a breath. Stood staring.

"Angelo," he murmured.

Then he ducked into the shadows before the young man could see him. It was too far back in Angelo's timeline, they couldn't meet.

But Jack was glad to see the boy before he was hurt by the Americans, hurt by him, hurting him.

**34 Serendipity**

Ianto wondered if it was serendipity, the assassin missing Jack and hitting him. Because since Tosh and Owen's deaths, the Captain had fluctuated from overprotective to a fault, to aloof and dismissive. And Ianto couldn't stand it. He wanted his Captain back, the one he knew and loved, not this shell of a man devastated by the deaths of his employees.

But in the first moment Jack realized the truth of his wounds, and the second moment of his pulling xilobytes from his flesh, Ianto knew something had changed. And despite Jack's need for Gwen, there was something deeper there for him. He could tell in the way Jack tugged him a little closer as they stood on the Plass after the world was righted again.

**35 Coulisse**

The entire Hub was Jack's coulisse. It amused Ianto to no end. He knew Jack had been practically living (or actually living) in the base for over one hundred years. The man knew every nook and cranny. And he loved using his arcane knowledge to make a flourishing grand entrance at every possible moment. Ianto loved it not only because it was entertaining and slightly cheesy, but also because whenever Jack got the chance for one of his bold, embellished arrivals, his face lit up, eyes bright with a pleased glow, a rare kind, and Ianto loved to see it.

**36 Semaphore (Drabble and a half)**

Trying to extract information about Jack and Ianto's relationship was like trying to communicate by semaphore to a nearsighted old man. Or trying to ask questions of a lazy cat. Or attempting to explain medical procedures to Gwen. Although, Owen wasn't sure if they were ignoring him or if they were both just thick.

But he'd seen the way Jack looked at Ianto when the Welshman had his back turned, how he fussed over him when he was hurt. And he'd heard how tenderly Ianto said their Captain's name, how gently he held Jack when he died. It was like everyone saw it but them.

And then he saw their eyes meet once and gazes soften, before masks slid back in place. And he realized, this is Torchwood, where your heart is bound to get irrevocably broken, and they were each terrified of breaking the other man's heart even more.

**37 Bananas (Drabble and a half)**

Jack had convinced Ianto to allow him to come grocery shopping with him. Ianto had rolled his eyes and relented with a warning not to embarrass him. Jack had put on an innocent "who me?" expression to which Ianto had slapped him lightly on the arm and beckoned him to follow.

Now they were going from aisle to aisle and Jack hadn't managed to make Ianto feel foolish yet. They needed fruit for the Hub, Ianto wanted them all to eat healthier. Suddenly, as Ianto was inspecting a couple of small greenish bananas, there was a crash, a growl, a scream. Weevils in the store.

"Shit!" Ianto exclaimed; he was unarmed. He instinctively gripped the fruit in his hand like a gun. Jack pulled his Webley.

"Keep a hold of that banana, Ianto."

"Why?"

A slow, affectionate grin spread across the Captain's face and he winked. "Good source of potassium!"

**38 Pudding (Note: UK-ers, in the US ****"pudding" is specifically a custard dessert.)**

"You're feeding the Weevil pudding?" Owen asked incredulously. Ianto turned on one foot.

"You did the surgery yourself! The poor thing's got a broken jaw. It won't be able to chew for months."

"Fine. But are you sure it likes pudding?"

"Already gave it some. It seemed to enjoy it."

"Aliens. Fucking weird."

"You don't like pudding, Owen? Is this one of your strange things, like Tintin?"

"Is this one of my— Tintin was creepy, dammit! And no, I've just never liked pudding. It feels like I'm eating innards."

"Well, then, I suppose the Weevils will like it even more."

**39 Laser Saw**

The first time Ianto ever had to use the laser saw, it was to pull a Nostrovite baby out of Jack's belly. First, Jack didn't really have anything in the way of a uterus, and second, his 51st century biology was rejecting it, violently. Jack was writhing all over the operating table.

But then the Captain passed out from exertion and stilled, and Ianto sliced him open with one pass of the laser, grabbed the Nostrovite baby, and closed him up again.

The creature could have been kept for observation, but he knew Jack wouldn't approve of raising a baby anything in Torchwood.

**40 Medbay**

It took Owen a while to get used to the medbay when he first joined Torchwood. It was strange, open-plan, brick, with steel morgue drawers readily available along the sunken wall. Cabinet doors opened to shelves containing not only human medicine and conventional surgical tools, but alien devices as well. He spent his first month discovering strange new items in the storage units around the space.

But after a while, it became his designated area, and he adored it. It was _his_ medbay. His personality emanated from it and marked it as his domain. His space. He loved it there.

**41 Homograph**

Ianto groaned. He was trying to help Tosh translate this alien book, but the entire language seemed to be made up mostly of homographs, and as such, could only be translated through context. However, since neither he nor Tosh spoke the language, it was basically impossible to decipher. "Ikonamiq" and "ikonamiq" separated only by a few words baffled him, especially since he _knew_ they meant two different things.

He slapped his book shut almost simultaneously as Toshiko, and sighed.

"This is impossible."

"Maybe we can ask Jack?" she offered.

"Hopefully he'll at least know the difference between qhiadslej and qhiadslej…."

**42 Ochre**

Ianto and Owen stood out on the sandy beach of the Gower Peninsula, the sunset turning the golden dried grasses behind them to a gorgeous red-brown. Tosh and Gwen were sitting closer to the water, sunbathing. Jack was who knows where. The two men breathed in the salty air and smiled at each other. The last time Ianto had been here had been with Lisa, when they'd camped out that slightly disastrous summer night.

But he shoved those old memories away. He was here, on vacation, with the rest of the team. He was here to make new happy memories.

**43 Jostling**

Owen is annoyed. It's Christmas, and everyone's pushing and shoving and elbowing everyone else to get through the store. He just wants to buy that necklace for Katie— the one she stood and admired for nearly ten minutes the other day— and get out of here.

"Owen?"

He whips around. "Mother? What are you doing here."

"Felt like I needed to spruce m'self up with some new jewelry. Why are _you_ here?"

"I'm buying a gift for my girlfriend, who I love. Which is better than can be said for you."

Angrily, he stomps off in the direction of the register.

**44 Frazzled**

Owen opened the door to a frazzled and worn down-looking Ianto. The Welshman came inside and dropped wearily down on the couch.

Owen got them each a glass of scotch and sat down beside him. "You look like shit. What's wrong?"

Ianto sighed. "I told tell Gwen about Flat Holm. She wouldn't give up asking. Jack went with her. He came back freaked out. Wouldn't let me go."

"So you're here because of Jack's secret and Gwen's big nose? Or am I just second best?

"No, I'm here because you haven't got an agenda, you're my friend, and you understand."

**45 Dépaysement (Double-drabble)**

Sometimes, during quiet moments, Ianto watches Jack reading or writing. His lips move silently along with the words, sometimes he pauses and looks at a word or sentence for a moment. Other times he'll be writing, and he'll have to speak quietly into his wrist strap and look at the translation.

Ianto knows English isn't Jack's native language, not by a long shot. He's sure language developed and evolved and changed drastically over thirty thousand years. But he wonders sometimes how out of place, how lost Jack feels.

Even now, one hundred and fifty years later, Jack still gets stuck sometimes on the English language, gets confused, turned around, forgets a custom or etiquette or convention. Sometimes he has to translate with his wrist strap. He still seems so out of his time, so displaced.

The word "homophobia" does not have a synonym in Jack's native language. The concept doesn't even exist anymore. Ianto learned that the night he found Jack staring, confused, at an article about the suicide of some young Americans.

When Ianto explained the definition to his boss, Jack sighed. His eyes were dark, mouth a grim line.

"Sometimes, I really just want to go home."

It made Ianto's heart ache.

**46 Juxtaposition**

Most would look at Owen and Ianto and see exact opposites: Owen was small and thin, Ianto was tall but slightly stocky; Owen was light-haired and dark-eyed, and Ianto was the reverse. Ianto was quiet, reserved and polite where Owen was loud, abrasive and sarcastic.

But they were anything but opposites. Anyone who looked close enough, who knew them well enough, would realize that their outwardly opposing traits were just masks for analogous inner personalities that had seen similar tragedies, similar losses, similar unpleasant pasts, and knew all too well the darkness of the world much too young in life.

**47 Morphine (Double-drabble)**

It's been nine and a half months since the world's gone to shit.

They knew the PM's Himalayas call was false as soon as they got to Tibet, and so turned around and went straight back to the Hub.

Then Hell arrived.

Gwen took charge until Rhys was killed on a food run. Then she walked around empty, robotic. She went off comms during a food run a month later. They found her body in an alley. Owen didn't tell Tosh it was a suicide.

Toshiko stayed alive for nearly seven months, until a Toclofane spotted her as she crossed to the SUV. Ianto had cried out at her from behind the window of the Tourist Centre, but that had done nothing.

Now only he and Owen are left, and Ianto is dying of a strange alien disease, Owen pushing morphine into him through an IV.

"Thanks for sticking with me," Ianto smiles weakly up at the medic, eyes dulled. "You're like a brother I never had."

"Same here, Jones." He grins reassuringly. They both ignore how fake the grin is.

Then Ianto's eyes close and his breathing slows, ceases, and Owen's face crumples, tears sliding silently down his face.

**48 Pogostick**

The alien looks like a living pogostick. Or an anorexic hammerhead shark with springs. Either way, it looks weird.

Jack is communicating with it through strange popping noises, hand gestures, and extra translation with the help of his Vortex Manipulator. Ianto and Owen are standing off to the side, confused.

"Well, of all the aliens we've seen, this has _got_ to be one of the weirdest." Owen comments.

"Yep."

"It's saying it's lost," Jack calls to them. "Spaceship runs on zinc and it ran out of power."

"Well, I can get some for you back at the Hub."

"Good. Do that."

**49 Fergal (Double-drabble)**

It's Tosh who sees the lineup of that new bar in town. She doesn't mention it until Ianto's gone up to tell Jack he's got plans, until the Welshman's already been gone a good twenty minutes.

They show up at the bar in pairs, and even Jack is dressed "plainclothes." They sit at the back, well away from the stage. They know Ianto wouldn't want to be embarrassed by them.

The moment he steps onstage, the whole team gasps. Ianto is wearing light jeans that hug his legs in all the right places, a black t-shirt with a buckle-laden jacket on top. He adjusts the mic, signals the guitarist, and opens his mouth.

The sounds that come out make the team want to close their eyes and purr. It's a velvety growl, a deep, resonant baritone that ripples and rumbles about their ears and washes over them in rich waves. There's something incredibly sexual about the growl coming deep from Ianto's chest.

Jack's grip is tight on the countertop, the others are the same. They are captivated by this side of Ianto, this sexy, groaning singer with dark eyes and quiet fury. They are captivated by the Ianto they know they'll never truly know.

**50 Skeleton (Drabble and a half)**

He wasn't like most men. Not that Jack cared. He'd fall in love with anything. But this man wasn't like most men.

They'd met in some alien bar, where human beings and their future counterparts were not widely known, and so his, well, condition, was not seen as strange.

At first, Jack couldn't look at him without remembering Ray, Wynnie, Francis Morgan, the Already Dead, Zero. At first he'd fall asleep next to him and wake up breathless, a scream of pain and fear caught in his throat as he remembered the terror of Ianto's wounds and the Already Dead closing in, the disgust when he saw Francis Morgan's tethered body, the pain when Zero's mother took him in her lightening to communicate.

But then he grew used to it. A skeleton for a lover wasn't the strangest thing he'd experienced. And he was a wonderful guy. Jack loved him.


	2. Chapter 2

**51 Rain (Double-drabble)**

Ianto sat in his flat and watched the rain. He started at a knock on the door, but didn't make a move to get up. Which was fine, because whoever was at the door had a key.

Owen strode in, dripping on the carpet, and shook himself like a dog. Ianto said nothing. The medic slipped off his shoes and stood in front of him, hand outstretched. Ianto looked at the hand. A beer was in it. He took the bottle. Owen sat down beside him. Their shoulders barely brushed.

"I know how you feel. I know what it's like. It hurts, it really does. I lost my…my fiancée. Katie. Lost her to Torchwood. Alien in her brain. I felt like this for months. Like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. Like I was empty, floating, full of pain."

A sob tore through Ianto's throat even as he tried to hold it back. Silence reigned; there was nothing but Ianto's soft hitches of breath and the pounding of rain on the roof and windows. He turned to face Owen. The medic's eyes glistened with tears.

"How long before it stops hurting."

Owen grimaced, closing his eyes. "I let you know when it happens."

**52 Contemplate**

Back when he first joined Torchwood, after Katie, when everything just looked so bleak, he would sometimes sit and think about exactly how he might kill himself, if things never looked up. He'd think about the people who'd need to be told, who he owed money to. He'd think about how he'd do it and where and when, what kind of note he'd leave.

And then some days, when things were looking up, he sit and think about the adventures he and Toshiko Sato and Captain Harkness could have together, driving around Cardiff after an alien some wet autumn night.

**53 Subterfuge**

Owen's sarcasm and acerbity is simply a ruse. Yes, he can truly be that way at times, but it is really just a mask to keep people away, to keep people from hurting him, purposefully or accidentally.

It's a threatening mask that everyone believes, which Owen is glad for. He doesn't want to have to try at something harder, or attempt blankness like Ianto. He likes that people don't try to get to know him.

The mask achieves his goal.

Even if some people manage to see through the deceit to the kind, gentle, lovesick, grief-stricken, lost, hurting man underneath.

**54 Inveigle**

Ianto was glad there was a massive file on Jack Harkness at Torchwood London, and even more grateful for the ridiculous amount of gossip that flitted around the building. It made everything so much easier.

He knew it would take some work; Harkness was a stubborn bastard. But he knew Jack would bed anything attractive, he knew that flattery would get him everywhere, he knew he was hot as hell in black pants and a studded belt, and he knew his coffee was heavenly.

He only needed that information and his own innate wiles to coax the job out of Jack.

**55 Nonsensical**

It was bad enough having to hear Gwen yammer on in Welsh to Rhys. Listening to Jack speak his native language was even more dizzying to Owen. He hated it. It didn't sound like any 21st century Earth language.

He wanted to ask Jack to stop, to tell him the nonsensical syllables were giving him a headache. He had no idea what Jack was saying. He didn't know if he liked that. But then he stopped thinking and just listened to the sounds, fluid, hypnotizing, lilting and slightly musical, Jack's adopted American accent completely absent. And he found it beautiful.

**56 Pedantic**

Owen is convinced that Ianto's pedantic nature is just another symptom of his extreme anal retentive-ness. The man reads up on _everything_, he knows every piece of information one could ever need.

And yet, it does some good. Whenever Owen needs to know something about the weather, the alien he's autopsying, the metal he's looking for, the kind of fucking scalpel he's trying to locate, Ianto has the information.

Owen is extremely grateful for Ianto's extensive knowledge. Grateful for the young man's wit that is equal to his own. It doesn't hurt that the man's a damn good lay, too.

**57 Nefarious (You get a cookie if you can guess what show I stole this scenario from.)**

"Owen?"

"What? I'm trying to work!"

"No you're not, you're playing video games. I can see you on the CCTV up here. You should really be autopsying that man."

"Oh, fine. So, what do you want, then?"

"There's a lorry full of fridges waiting outside the tourist centre. Said you rang the other night and ordered them."

"Oh, okay….they did?"

"Were you drunk again?"

"No, it's all part of my nefarious plot to take over the world with frozen foods and ice cold beverages and make all of Britain fat pigs. Of course I was drunk!"

"You're paying for them."

**58 Fever (Triple drabble and a half as a present to someone)**

Ianto groaned. He felt like shit. His whole body ached and all he was doing was sitting at a desk in the archives doing filing. He looked at the clock. Time for another round of coffee.

As he handed Owen his mug, the medic frowned and looked closer at him.

"Are you all right? You look like shit. In fact, you look like you're about to keel over."

"I don't know. I think I'm a little sick."

The medic narrowed his eyes, grabbed a thermometer and stuck it forcefully in Ianto's mouth. A few seconds later he grabbed it and looked at it.

"A little sick? You've got a fever of 39 degrees. Let me take you home before you fall over and die."

Ianto was about to protest, but a wave of dizziness hit him and Owen had to steady him with hands on both of his shoulders. He took the Welshman by the arm and lead him up the stairs towards the cog door. Suddenly he felt worse than ever.

"Ianto's sick, Jack. Fever. I'm taking him home." Owen called. A sound of consent drifted from Jack's office.

The ride home was quiet. Ianto dozed restlessly in the passenger seat, leaning his forehead against the cool window. Owen glanced at him periodically, frowning.

Back in Ianto's flat, Owen gently manhandled the Welshman, who was limp as a doll, out of his clothes and tucked the younger man into bed. Moments later he came back with some water and Tylenol. He held Ianto's head tenderly as he had the man swallow the pills and tilted the glass against his lips. Ianto sighed at the cool water sliding down his throat.

"You're going to sleep. I'll be here for as long as I can, unless Jack calls me back. Just call out if you need anything."

Ianto nodded weakly and closed his eyes, pulling the blankets closer in. He wasn't sure if he imagined Owen's hands brushing across his forehead and through his hair, but then he could hear the Londoner leaving the room. Moments later he sank into sleep.

**59 Inevitable (Based on GDL's Torchwood comic Shrouded.)**

Ianto sighed. It pained him to know what he knew. He hated that Mairwyn had shown him his death, that she'd put that knowledge in him, the knowledge that he'd leave Jack alone, that his last words would be something like _that_.

It hurt him to see Jack's pain, Jack hurting, unable to respond to his declaration because he refused to believe he was dying. He couldn't know about his own death. He couldn't change the fixed future. He didn't know what the outcome would be, but helping Mairwyn couldn't come to good.

He swallowed the Retcon without looking back.

**60 Symphony**

Every night, Jack fell asleep to the sounds of the Hub. After living there for so many long years, it was no longer annoying. Now it was a lullaby, a reassurance that everything was still fine, he wasn't alone, lulling him to sleep.

The hum of computers, the leathery flapping of Myfanwy's wings, her screech as she passed overhead, the groaning and growling of the Weevils in the cells, the sounds of water sliding down the column, the clink and creak of metal as the structures shifted slightly. It was all a beautiful symphony to him. The symphony of home.

**61 Prayer (Double-drabble)**

As he drove towards Turnmill, Ianto sent a prayer to a god he didn't even believe in that Owen had not been in any pain when he died. He'd come to think of Owen as a brother, as a best friend, rather than an annoying colleague.

Once the power had been brought back to the building, the Turnmill employees had somehow pumped the radioactive material back to the original chamber. At Torchwood's request, they had not entered the emergency chamber yet.

Ianto donned a protective suit and ventured inside the tiny room. The bright white lighting was tinged with red. Machines and wires dangled helplessly along the walls.

He almost choked on his own breath when he found Owen's body. The skin that wasn't black from decomposition was an angry red. But he knew it was Owen. He called to one of the employees for backup. Reverently, choking back tears, he and the other man lifted Owen's body and placed it in the body bag.

Once he was back in the SUV, with Owen's body in the boot, Ianto drove down the streets until his vision blurred too much and he had to pull over. He put his head in his hands and cried for his doctor, his colleague, his brother, his friend.

**62 Corsage**

Owen pinned the corsage handed to him to his t-shirt. He wasn't a fan of weddings. Even when he was alive, they'd made him feel sad, made him remember his own wedding that never happened. It hurt.

He remembered Katie's overjoyed tears when he'd proposed to her. Her excitement as she began to plan the wedding, the love for her that had swelled inside him as her face lit up whenever it was mentioned. He missed her so much sometimes, enough to make him ache inside.

But now there was Toshiko to be nice to and to dance with. Anything to push his pain away.

**63 Ravenous (Based on Life Lived Without Thinking by pocketmouse)**

After that first time, Ianto felt hungry for it, wanting it all the time. He wanted those extreme sensations, the feeling of finally _feeling_. And Owen, he wanted Owen again. He wanted that tenderness he'd felt as the medic's fingers had curled over the back of his neck.

He craved the feeling of being alive, of not being alone, of being cared for.

After his death, Owen was trapped. Trapped in his body without sense or sensation. And he craved that room. He craved the ability Ianto'd had to feel, to put his senses on overdrive.

He was stuck in that room with no way out.

**64 Tendencies**

As he slides Suzie's body into its place in the morgue wall, he wishes he'd seen her homicidal tendencies earlier. She would often come up to the tourist centre and sit with him. They'd talk about all sorts of stuff as they played chess. They'd been tied when she killed herself.

But he hadn't seen the damage the Glove had done to her. Holding the metal gauntlet in his hand, he could feel its power, its negative force. But he hadn't seen its effect on Suzie.

He just hopes there are no other gloves around to do that to anyone else.

**65 Overconfidence**

Ianto knew that Jack's displays of giddiness and overconfidence were often a mask. He knew Jack rarely felt that way, that he was often plagued with nightmares, regrets, and the knowledge that everyone he loved would leave him one day.

He tried as hard as he could to comfort Jack. The others assumed he and Jack were sleeping together, but their relationship was less about sex and much more about emotional connection, the fact that they understood each other through loss.

He wanted Jack to forget his regrets and feel the way he pretended to be. Jack should be happy.

**66 Hindsight**

He realizes now how much of an ass he was not to say it back, how horrible that was. And now it plagues him, that regret. It hurts, pulses in the back of his mind like a constant headache, throbs as he travels the world because everything reminds him of _him_.

So when he learns of Syriath and the House of the Dead, the last night, the calling of the dead ones, the coming of the spirits, he hopes maybe he'll see some remnant of Ianto there, some shadow of him, a memory. Just so he can say it properly.

**67 Implosion**

You hate this feeling, this pulsing tension from too many secrets. You hate having to hide from this team you've grown to love, grown protective of. Even though they often ignore you, you love them for their unique personalities, their humanity.

You hate feeling uncertain about Lisa, about whether she's still the woman you love or if she's changed, and if Jack is slowly taking her place in your heart.

You hate this feeling like you're going to implode from all the emotions and the secrets and the hiding. You don't want to do this any more. But you promised her.

**68 Quintessential (Drabble and a half)**

The RAF coat. It was quintessential Jack Harkness.

But now Jack could barely stand to have the heavy wool upon his shoulders. He wore it anyway, because it was expected of him. But it hurt.

His old coat, the one that had been destroyed along with the Hub, had held memories. He'd slept in that coat for warmth on different planets. There was a stain on the sleeve from when he met Estelle, a tear from an incident with Ianto, another from a rowdy party with Stella, scents from all the places he'd been and people he'd loved had lingered in that coat. That coat had held moments and memories he would never relive, but could always remember just by looking at or feeling or smelling the fabric.

This coat had no memories. None but that of Ianto's death and the death of Steven. None but that of his failure.

**69 Acrid**

The acrid smell of death and destruction and rubble and lasers lingered in Ianto's nostrils for weeks after Canary Wharf. The screams of his colleagues and Lisa's agonized cries echoed in his ears. Visions of Daleks and Cybermen haunted his nightmares. He couldn't get the tension knot of fear out of his stomach.

Only when Lisa was killed and he was suspended did he finally relax. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The tension was suddenly gone, the ringing in his ears suddenly stopped, the fear had disappeared. He was ready to start healing.

**70 Drabble (Drabble and a half)**

One day, a letter came in the post to the Tourist Centre. Ianto's name was on the front, written in what he recognized as Jack's neat, flourishy handwriting. He frowned and opened it. The card was beautiful. Inside was a drabble of a note, the ink a glowing, supernatural blue.

_"Dear Ianto,_  
_It's been over two thousand years since I left earth and I still have not forgotten you. I know you've always wanted to see the stars, even after the Battle. So I decided to send some to you. I'm in the Fylqazx galaxy. At least, that's how you'd spell it in English. I just want you to know that, though I can't say it when I'm with you then, I do love you. Have a piece of the stars. It's in the envelope. Some rock of the Rielai star. In Fylqazxic, "Rielai" means love._  
_I won't forget,_  
_Jack"_

**71 Anthem**

For a while, during bouts of extreme boredom, Owen tried to figure out what Torchwood's theme song would be. He knew it would be either something depressing or something badass. He just didn't know exactly what.

First it was Eye of The Tiger. Then it was Search and Destroy by the Sex Pistols. He briefly considered O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman, but then he learned that Jack couldn't die.

He eventually decided Torchwood had no anthem. They were indefinable, amorphous, strange. They hurt and took and helped and gave no matter what and that was all that mattered.

**72 Smoke (Drabble and a half)**

They'd gotten two young girls killed and nearly been unable to save a third. Owen had patched the little girl up, handed her over to the paramedics, and stormed away across the road. Ianto found him leaning against a wall in an alley, hand rubbing his forehead, his other hand fumbling in his pocket.

Ianto slouched beside him. Owen finally got the pack out of his trousers and stuck a cigarette in between his lips. Ianto took the proffered pack and selected his own cigarette. He flicked his own lighter and lit his and Owen's. They took alternating drags, watching the smoke drift out across the night air.

"We almost fucking lost her." Owen kicked at the ground.

"But we didn't. You saved her. _You_ saved her."

"Yeah, but—"

"Owen. You did good. Jack has to be proud of you. I know I am."

"Thanks, Ianto."

"It's my job."

**73 Dew**

Ianto groaned helplessly as he watched dew form on the grass around him. He couldn't move. Having a leg impaled on broken rebar will do that to you. His comm was somewhere out of reach in the grass about two meters away. It had fallen out as he was running.

And now he was stuck here, in the middle of some ruins. The team was further off in the forest. He was rather glad that he was quick-witted and had managed to tie off a tourniquet quite fast.

He just hoped Jack's dashing heroics would come save him in time.

**74 Oil (Drabble and a half)**

"Are you really going to give me a fucking massage?"

"Are you really going to question my motives as a doctor? All I did was put my hands on your back and I could feel the knots there. Now take your damn shirt and trousers off and lie on your stomach."

Ianto did so, tensing up as Owen straddled his hips to get the best leverage and poured the cool oil onto his skin. But after a while, as the medic began working out the knots in his upper back, he relaxed, making happy little grunting and moaning noises into the pillow.

"What?"

Ianto turned his head. "I said, if Jack was still gone I'd let you fuck me." A sharp inhale of breath from above made him tense up again. "Sorry. I didn't mean to assume."

Owen gently worked a knot lower in his back. "You didn't assume wrong."

**75 Empathy**

"I know you changed your file to get in." Jack told Ianto softly as they sat together on Ianto's sofa. He didn't sound accusing, just curious. "What else did you lie about?"

"I really was a junior archivist. I liked it. But they wanted me to be an interrogator. Because I'm an empath. They tested me and apparently I'm stronger than usual. I refused to be an interrogator, though. It felt wrong to me."

"Is that why you always know what we want before we say anything?"

"Yes. I like it, though. I like taking care of people."

"I know."

**76 Secret (Drabble and a half)**

It was easier to keep a secret when another person knew it. Although he'd been forced to tell Gwen. She'd seen him in action.

But he hadn't expected Ianto to find out.

The Welshman was waiting for him with a glass of scotch and a hand to hold when Jack finally drove the SUV back to the Hub at a snail's pace.

"Why did you have to kill yourself, Jack?" Ianto asked, his voice sad and weary, eyes miserable. "You don't…want it…do you?"

For a moment, Jack was filled with fear that Ianto would run away from him. He didn't want him to leave. Sighing, he pulled Ianto into a hug and buried his face in the younger man's hair.

"Sometimes I do, very much. And sometimes not at all. But I can't stay dead. There's nothing for you to worry about."

"I'll still worry. And I'll still be here."

**77 Masked**

The costumes they'd shown up in were magnificent. Jack was getting all the attention. Gwen was checking out all the fine young men. Ianto was a little jealous, but there was no time for that. He had to be looking for their suspect.

Ah! He found her, laughing with some young blonde man. He slid through the crowd over to her. She smiled at him, eyes glinting unnaturally violet behind the mask. The blonde wandered away. She smiled again, fluttered her fan.

In one smooth move, she was sedated and he was carrying her outside like a hero in an old swashbuckling film.

**78 Desire**

"Do you think I…"

"Raped them, like Suzie said?" Ianto frowned at Owen. "No. I've looked it up in the archives. That cologne works the same way Jack's pheromones do, only much stronger. It just makes you seem much more attractive than you actually are."

"Are you sure?" Owen looked terrified. Ever since Suzie had whispered to him, quiet over the comms as she sat in helpless the wheelchair, he'd thought about it. He couldn't bear the thought of hurting someone innocent.

"Yes, I'm sure. If I wasn't, I would've told Jack, and he would've done worse to you."

"God…"

**79 Exploration**

Ever since he'd seen Ianto down in the communal showers (it was the Welshman's job to clean up the muck from the residents), he'd wanted him. Hell, he'd wanted him since that night with the Weevil. The man looked delicious in tight black clothes.

He wanted to explore every inch of Ianto's body, to taste every piece of skin, to feel him everywhere. He wanted to look at those blue eyes while inside him. He wanted to kiss those pouting lips, to hear that deep Welsh accent moan his name.

He wanted the mysterious Welshman who'd charmed his way into his life.

**80 Quixotic**

In the back of his logical mind, he'd always known it was stupid and hugely unrealistic to believe Diane was the one who would save him. He'd hoped, he'd dreamed. She fascinated him, she surprised him, and she was gorgeous and smart and he'd staked everything on her. He'd imagined that she'd love him as much as he loved her, that she'd stay with him but stay the amazing independent woman she was.

He imagined that she'd somehow give him back the happiness he'd lost when Katie died. That she'd somehow fill the emptiness and loneliness that left his nights so dark.

He imagined that she'd save him.

**81 Sunshine**

Owen stretched out on the lawn, basking in the warm sunshine. Katie giggled beside him and poked his belly.

"Oi!" But he was smiling. He grabbed her hand gently and brought it to his lips. Her hair fell into her face, shading it. Reaching up, he brushed it away from her eyes with a grin. "You're so beautiful."

She smiled at him again, her eyes lighting up. The sun shone through her blonde hair, giving her a halo of gold. There was colour high on her cheeks from her sunbathing. She looked delighted. He wanted always to see her like this.

**82 Congregate**

Sometimes, on late nights, Owen, Ianto and Suzie would congregate in the meeting room and play card games. Or, sometimes, boardgames like Taboo or Trivial Pursuit. After a little while, it became a weekly thing. They'd play every Tuesday night for as long as they could. Some things, like poker, Owen was better at. Suzie was better at Taboo and Ianto at Trivial Pursuit. Everything else they were equally proficient in. They loved those friendly breaks in the monotony.

Until the Glove arrived.

After Suzie's death, Owen and Ianto were ashamed that they had not seen the change in her.

**83 Vienna (Drabble and a half. Based on I Had No Idea I Had Been Travelling by kalichan)**

Ianto had gone up through Austria on his way to the Netherlands. And though he'd not met people as amazing there as he did in Amsterdam, Vienna's palpable history and beauty had fascinated and enchanted him. He'd wanted to see everything, but time was short and he'd wanted to go everywhere. As he rushed to the train, he'd kissed his fingers and touched buildings just as he had in Paris, promising them he'd be back one day.

Jack wandered the sunset-golden streets of Vienna. He remembered Ianto's glowing face as he relayed fond memories of the place to Jack as they sat in his office. He'd always said he wanted to go back. He never got the chance.

Jack kissed his fingers gently and touched the side of a building as he wandered toward the train station.

For a moment he imagined Ianto's tender kisses touching him once again.

**84 Denouement**

He watched, standing stunned beside Mairwyn, as she showed him Tosh's death, Owen's. Poor, brave, wonderful Tosh. Poor, sad, strong Owen.

He wanted so badly for this all to end well for him. It was greedy, but his intentions were better than one would think. He hurt not for himself, but for Jack. He didn't want Jack to be alone, with the deaths of his employees on his shoulders.

As he stood with Mairwyn on the rubble of the Hub, he wished for this story to end with something, anything, good for Jack. But he knew it wouldn't be that way.

**85 Cartographer**

Owen sometimes felt like a cartographer, mapping out the bodies of the women he fucked, kissing down their skin and running his hands across the paths of their bodies.

But there was only one map which he knew was complete. He knew the minute distance between Katie's eyes, the length of her from toe tip to top of the head. He knew each one of her teeth when she smiled and the texture of every finger. He knew the centimeters the beats of her heart drummed out. He knew her for miles.

He just wished he could get the chance to travel her paths again.

**86 Lullaby**

Ianto is curled up in Owen's lap, shivering through a fever dream, though his brow is hot to the touch. The Welshman is skinnier than Owen has ever seen him. He pushes the hair from Ianto's face and puts a hand to his cheek.

They've been stuck in the Himalayas for months now. Gwen is gone. Tosh is weak, but she sits across the tent, closer to the door, keeping watch, pretending not to notice the tears in the medic's eyes as he watches Ianto breathe.

Owen leans over and begins to sing a lullaby to Ianto, easing him away.

**87 Cats**

"Jack, do you know what happened to Puska?"

"Who?"

"What do you mean who? That cat!"

"The one you dropped into the Hub."

"And onto my own face. Karma's already got me. I'm scarred for life. Where is she?"

"I don't know."

"Well, she ran away after that thing attacked you. I want to find her before Myfanwy eats her or at least so I can get her outside somewhere."

Gwen came down from Myfanwy's aerie, eyebrow raised, holding some tufts of fur.

"Myfanwy may have beat you to it."

Ianto and Jack looked at each other sheepishly, heads bowed.

**88 Alice (Drabble and a half)**

Eight years after Steven's death, Alice got out of her car and walked up the street to her house. A black shape stood just outside the gate. Freezing, she drew her gun.

"Who are you?"

The figure moved into the light, and Alice bit back a gasp. Her father looked more broken than she'd ever seen. The ruin in his face shaded everything. His despair was palpable, and she could see the self-loathing, the guilt in his eyes from her position several paces away.

"How long has it been?"

"Four and a half earth years."

She beckoned him to follow her. In the light of the porch, she examined him as she unlocked the door. The collar of his coat was stained with red, and she wondered how many times he's killed himself since he left earth.

"It's all right, Dad. Even when I hated you, I still loved you."

**89 Sherd**

"This was all that fell through the Rift, I think. What is it?" Ianto handed Jack the broken bits.

Jack peered closely at them, turning them over in his hands. After a few moments of inspection, he smiled brightly.

"I think they're pieces of pottery from the Ssuroa galaxy. They're probably worth millions in Ssuroan currency. They take pride in their art."

"Then how'd it get here?"

"Smugglers or thieves, probably."

"And they broke a beautiful piece of art."

"Just be grateful that there's a galaxy out there that appreciates art and emotional expression even more than the human race."

**90 In Situ (Drabble and a half)**

"The bodies on floor fourteen, they've not been moved?" The police officer sounded stern.

"No, ma'am." The young cop said.

"Good."

She signaled a coroner and his assistant. "Floor fourteen has not been handled. Take one of them—" here, she gestured toward the group of young police officers with cameras round their necks. "And go up there. Have them photograph the scene before you move anything. Then you can load the two bodies on that floor."

All three men gasped softly as they entered the room. A large blue-tinged tank stood there. Something was inside it, but it was silent. They stood reverently over the two men wrapped around each other.

All three of them had mostly become unaffected by and hardened to deaths, but these two welled up tears in all of them. This was something they rarely saw. Love of the sweetest kind, protection of another in death.

**91 Debitage**

After the sex alien had been destroyed, Owen went back to the site to bring back the asteroid so they could incinerate it. As he picked up the pieces from where he'd chipped at the rock a day earlier, he thought back to Ianto's reaction to his walking up to the main Hub stark naked and hard.

The Welshman hadn't been remotely surprised or disgusted, or even angry. In fact, he seemed slightly interested. Maybe it was the aftereffect of being horny as hell making him think that way, but he wasn't sure he wouldn't enjoy a tryst with Ianto.

**92 Gorget**

When Jack learned that Ianto was into leather (kinky as well as smart, _and_ a history buff to boot, Jack loved that) he knew exactly what to get him. Because the Welshman already had the black leg-hugging trousers and the skintight black shirt and the gorgeous jacket and the laced boots and the studded belt.

No, Jack got him a gorget, a wide leather collar that wrapped round his throat and extended down along his shoulders and chest. It was black with metal studs and buckles where it attached.

When Ianto put it on for the first time, Jack had to rip it off immediately and lick and bite all along his neck. Then it went back on, and Ianto tantalized him with it for the rest of the night, forcing him to taste leather and sweat and skin each time he went in for a kiss.

Goddamn sexy Welshmen.

**93 Quixotic**

Sometimes Ianto dreamed he went gallivanting around with a normal group of detectives, investigating routine murders and robberies on Cardiff's streets.

Sometimes he dreamed he was back at the estate, like Rhiannon, living there with a house and kids of his own. In some dreams, Lisa was alive and married to him. In others, it was Jack who was raising the children.

Sometimes he dreamed he'd never left Uni, and was still stuck learning about psychology and anthropology.

Then he'd awake from the quixotic, absurd visions and lounge, imagining they were real, until Torchwood seeped into his brain again.

**94 Jaded**

Owen and Ianto were the perfect match. Both lost, both too young for the amount of darkness they'd seen, both angry, both jaded about relationships of any sort.

Ianto knew that Owen responded to equality, not coddling. He knew that the man didn't do romance and that he would only allow himself to be vulnerable alone, in the dark, when his partner was just as exposed.

Owen knew that Ianto was stronger than he seemed, that he thrived on knowledge, that he didn't do romance, and that he was willing to open up and be vulnerable if he needed to be.

They were perfect for each other.

**95 Irrelevant (Drabble and a half)**

Personal life should be separated from professional life, Owen was always told. Personal life and past should be irrelevant in the workplace.

But he can't help it. He can't help knowing, understanding every one of those kids that comes in bruised and broken and angry, saying softly that they "just fell down," because he was one of them once. And his mum didn't care what her boyfriend did. She didn't. So he got out.

So now he can't help coming to them when no one else is around, smiling gently into frightened, hardened eyes, telling them he understands, he was like that once, that it'll be all right, that all they have to do is wait till they can get out, and then it'll be fine. That they'll turn out okay, in the end. It will, and they will, really.

He doesn't tell them that they might turn into him.

**96 Sensitize**

Owen was slightly apprehensive. But he knew the good it had done for Jack, and so he'd let Ianto do this.

Blindfolded, his other senses were heightened. He could hear Ianto moving about the room. He could taste arousal in the air.

Hands touching him made him jump, but he relaxed. Soon, a gentle tongue lapped along the contours of his ribs. He was quickly growing hard.

His stomach muscles jumped as cool ice skittered across his abdomen, then relaxed as melted wax soon followed. This assault on his senses made Owen moan, he could feel himself coming undone. He was letting go, losing control.

It was just what he wanted.

**97 Insidious (Double-drabble)**

_"You saved us, didn't you?"_  
_"And I began to like it. And look what I became."_

It wasn't until he'd left Europe that Jack realized what he'd turned into. He hadn't realized until then that he'd forgotten that everyone else was mortal, really, truly mortal. He'd forgotten that his team could die, and that sending them in before him simply for the fun and adventure of saving them and getting them out of tight situations was a bad idea.

Because that's what happened, didn't it? He didn't care that he was the immortal one. He liked showing off his dashing hero persona, his cleverness. He was like Peter Pan, always beating the bad guys, always saving the Lost Boys. The insidious addiction of always being rescuer, the brave one, the hero, creeping closer into his heart and spreading ignorance throughout him.

He'd been willing to sacrifice his team because he thought he could save them again. He became the harbinger of his own downfall, he'd lead the charge to his own employees' deaths. All because he was too proud to try to treat them as equals, to try to treat them like they'd die someday, to realize how precious they were, how much he needed them.

He enjoyed the horrible dashing heroics, and look what he became.

**98 Homunculus (Drabble and a half)**

Ianto remembered, in dreams, infiltrating the Valiant, hiding behind masks, becoming one of the rotating guards of Jack's boiler room cell. He'd wake up gasping.

He remembered watching helplessly as Jack screamed, cried, died, was stripped of all dignity, never touched by a gentle hand for a year, unendurable agony, and still he protected them. He'd wake up, pillow wet, face anguished.

In his dreams, Jack changed, tearing into his own flesh, sinking into himself, into something larger, smarter, stronger. But he knew this to be his own wishful mind. Because upon waking, clutching at the sheets, he could remember the day UNIT and their infiltrators fled, just before the reverse of the year, and he remembered Jack's weak, tear-stained, damaged expression, and how he longed to just kiss him once, help him a little, reassure him. It could not be so.

He'd wake up devastated and torn apart, aching.

**99 Decorum**

Jack wondered if Ianto's sense of decorum and propensity toward dignified manners was an attempt to break away from his upbringing. He knew that the Welshman's claim that his father was a tailor was a lie. He knew the young man's father had worked at Debenham's.

But he respected Ianto's wish to get as far away from his childhood as possible, he knew what it was like. And he knew how easy it was to fall into the protection of soldier-like decorum, politeness and dignity. He knew how much one fell in love with the blank mask of a warrior.

**100 Time**

It was all right. Like he'd told Tosh, really, it was all right.

He'd not been himself, not been right since Jack had brought him back. Hell, even before then he'd thought maybe it would be better to die. The struggle of emotion inside him had been too much to bear.

So now, though he'd raged against it only moments ago, he stood to meet death head on, a small, relieved smile on his face as he realized it was his time, and maybe he'd finally get the peace he'd been looking for since the loss of his wonderful Katie.


	3. Chapter 3

**101 Appoint**

It bothered Ianto. Owen should have been appointed second in command after Suzie's death. Instead, no one really was, until finally Gwen was. Gwen, the new girl, the one who had no idea the brutality you'd see with Torchwood, the things you'd become used to.

Ianto liked Owen, despite their cutting relationship, and knew how intelligent and experienced he was. Smart enough to be second in command. He wanted that. This new girl wasn't right, wasn't good enough. She thought only with her heart, instead of with her heart and mind the way Owen would.

She just wasn't like Owen.

**102 Grateful (Double-drabble)**

They all had so much to be thankful for. Jack had saved them all.

Owen often wondered if he'd even be alive still if Jack hadn't found him. He guessed not. He'd probably have killed himself or something years ago.

Tosh knew what would've happened to her had Jack never rescued her. She'd have gone mad, there in that cell, and wasted away, shivering and afraid.

Gwen didn't think about it, didn't feel the need to. She'd have gone on happily in the police, married Rhys, had a kid. Maybe an affair. She'd have been normal and content.

Ianto often wondered what would have happened if Jack hadn't let him in. He knew Lisa would have died. And he'd have probably gone not much later, with nothing left to him and no one left to live for, he'd have died too damaged and too young.

Jack often wondered what might have happened if he hadn't found this perfect team. He would have kept going alone, kept dying too much. He'd have felt alone, unfamiliar, displaced, and found some way to leave earth as early as possible. He would have run.

He had so much to be thankful for. His team had saved him.

**103 Hover (Drabble and a half)**

It had been just days since the funeral. Jack had taken to holing up inside his office, or sleeping too long inside his bunker, or not sleeping at all, spending day after day up on rooftops.

Ianto hated to see him hurting. But he could do nothing. Jack's walls were more solid than ever, and he didn't have the emotional strength to climb them. He was devastated from Tosh and Owen's deaths, too. And he could do nothing for either of them.

After going to Flat Holm, Jack returned and stayed in his office for hours. When Ianto came up to check on him, Jack tugged him down onto his lap, wrapping his arms around him, hard. Ianto stroked his shoulders gently.

"Jack…"

"Hm?" The Captain sounded distracted.

"Jack, I…" They hovered, balancing on the precipice, on the edge of a knife. Broke. "Do you want some coffee?"

Crashed.

Shattered.

**104 Steered**

Ianto steered the SUV towards the water. Jack groaned.

"This again? You already tried it. It definitely didn't work."

"I looked at the blueprints, made some changes, added things. I just want to give it a test drive."

"Please don't start that Top Gear jabber again."

"Where's your sense of fun?"

"I left in the sea the last time you almost drowned us."

"Really."

"Fine. Go, then."

"Now hold on, Scaredy Cat. You can hold on to my arm, if you like."

"Shut up."

"I'm serious."

"Shut up. Just go."

Twenty minutes later they were flagging down a fishing boat.

**105 Laced**

Ianto stared at the glass of water being handed to him. It looked cool, inviting, relieving. He eyed it suspiciously.

"There's no retcon." Owen looked honest. Ianto took the water and drank. The cool liquid felt wonderful. Then he felt ashamed. He shouldn't be feeling good. He didn't deserve it. He put the water down quickly.

"Why don't you get it over with, then?"

"What?"

"Clearly Jack sent you here to do his dirty work."

Owen stared, confused. "No, Ianto, no. We talked. We all want you to stay. All of us do. We understand. And you need to stay."

**106 Slated**

"Is this Jack Harkness?"

"Speaking."

"My…my name is Rhiannon Davies. I'm Ianto Jones' sister. Ianto told me to call you if I needed anything."

Jack's breath catches in his throat at the mention of Ianto. His gorgeous Ianto. It's been twelve years for him, only five and a half for her. She still sounds better than him.

"Yes, he was right."

"My estate is slated to be demolished in a month. We still haven't found anywhere to go."

"I will do everything I can, Rhiannon."

"Thank you, Mr. Harkness."

"Call me Jack, please. I owe Ianto everything."

"So do I."

**107 Cello**

Normally Owen could compartmentalize this stuff, push it away. But this, this was bad. This was worse than bad and he couldn't get the images, the pain, the fear, out of his head. The aliens had captured him and tortured him until the rest of the team had come to his aid.

Now Ianto sat at his bedside as he curled into himself against the onslaught of pain memory.

"Do you want anything?" Ianto asked.

"Just…talk to me. Make me forget."

Ianto nodded and began to speak, low and monotonous, allowing Owen to drown in the soft, soothing cello sounds of his baritone.

**108 Faith**

Faith watched from her cards. Watched from the connections she'd developed in six hundred years. She watched as the immortal one, the Captain, wandered the earth. He was wrecked, raw. She watched his regret grow stronger, his sadness grow larger, his hurt grow more painful. She watched as he broke further, shattered even more. And for once, she wished she could change the past, or bring someone back from death.

Because she knew what would happen to the Captain in years to come. She knew the pain he was due to suffer. She knew what horrors he'd have to endure.

**109 Hopeful (Drabble and a half)**

Ianto is dreaming.

He can hear it. He can hear life, feel it pulsing all around him. It's a great big thudding thing, a giant purring kitten, and it surrounds him, embraces him. He can feel its warmth round his shoulders like a coat. He knows if he opens his eyes, it will be bright and warm like fire and also cold and dark, nighttime under thick ice. It will press on him like weights. It will blind him like stars too close.

Ianto is dreaming.

He knows life is there. He knows it. He watches from above as the Jack stands, rebuilds, as Cardiff stands, rebuilds, as the world stands, rebuilds. The Universe. Stand. Rebuild. The Cycle. Life.

He hovers on the precipice.

Life pulses around him. Hope. Eagerness. Optimism. Creation. Life again. Hope again. Life once more.

Ianto isn't dreaming. Ianto is watching. Ianto is waiting. Ianto is Living.

**110 Macerate**

Jack sometimes looks across the Hub at Ianto, who is refilling mugs of coffee, or clearing off Gwen's workstation, or fixing yet another broken wire on the sub-etheric resonator, and wants desperately to _reveal_ him.

He wants to dump the young man into a flood of adoration and passion and devotion and _love_ until he breaks apart into all his individual components so Jack can put them together right again and fix this mismatched, broken man that wanders the Hub overqualified and under-appreciated.

He wants to pull Ianto's pieces apart and hold them close before he gives him to completion.

**111 Pyroclastic (Note: taking inspiration from the literal translation)**

John bumps into him in a bar in the Yggbrixa galaxy. It's not planned, or expected, and neither know what to say, so they simply order their drinks and get down to business.

Jack's sucking them down faster than John's ever seen him, well on his way to under-the-table status. The energy, the light, the spark John is used to, is dulled, gone. There are cracks and fragments and gaps where he used to be whole.

Jack's fire is gone, he's been broken into pieces, bits of him falling to earth, falling to the ground, smoldering. A smoking crater.

**112 Chicanery**

Owen could remember the day Jack hired Ianto. He'd come back into the Hub late, dirty, grumbling, but smiling. He'd actually been whistling.

"What happened?" Owen had asked, curious as to why his normally happy boss was even happier, despite his disheveled state.

Jack beamed. "A new recruit has just tricked me into employing him."

"And you're going to anyway?"

"Oh, yes. He may have been Torchwood One, but he's smart, he's gorgeous, he's got a great accent, and he comes with a pterodactyl."

"Whatever the hell that means," Owen rolled his eyes and went back to his computer game.

**113 Christmas (Drabble and a half)**

Owen felt like a black tar ball had fallen from the sky, from Diane's plane when she left him, and dropped into his body. He felt weighed down. He slouched over his desk.

What a goddamn week.

"Merry Christmas!" Jack crowed when he finally came out of the office. He looked a little off-kilter, if Owen looked hard enough, and for a moment he wondered what had become of John. There were dark circles around Jack's eyes.

Then Tosh called back, "And you, Jack!" and Owen shook his head and scoffed. Some Christmas.

The black tar ball was roiling in his gut. It was getting bigger, hungrier, pulling everything in. He could feel it consuming him. He was getting twitchy. He wanted to rage and scream and hit things. He wanted to take off his skin.

Diane was gone and he was filled with black tar and empty.

Some Christmas.

**114 Teddy Bear**

Jack doesn't remember having a teddy bear. The fifty-first century isn't like the twenty-first.

Jack remembers sleeping in a large bed with other young ones, not just his family, but others. He remembers learning to communicate with them purely through touch, and little humming sounds at the back of the throat, fragments of their home language, a child's imagination language.

He remembers how they would speak to each other in the night in this way, him and the others, when they were supposed to be asleep. They would tell stories, ask questions of the Universe.

He was the only one who left to find the answers.

**115 Bach**

Ianto entered the Hub to find his ears assaulted with sounds so harmonic they were nearly dissonant.

"What are you doing?" He yelled over the thunder of the organ.

"It's Halloween, I'm getting in the mood." Owen harrumphed at him. Ianto crossed to the speakers and turned down the volume. He raised an eyebrow at the medic.

"You are aware that Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky is featured as credit music or background in more old horror movies than Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, right?"

"You spend too much time reading, Jones."

"At least I know more than everyone else."

**116 Dinosaur**

It was only as they were going home from the Valiant that the Doctor told Jack the meteor was not actually a meteor. Jack wasn't sure why he was so surprised. He shouldn't be.

"So I was stuck eating dino meat because of a freighter and a poor oblivious kid?"

"A kid who was trying to do the right thing."

"All of us try to do the right thing, Doctor. It's just hard for you to see sometimes."

The Doctor hung his head. He knew a reprimand when he heard one.

Jack smiled again, forgiving. "At least I got to eat something new."

**117 Egg**

Often Jack thinks of his adventures with the Doctor, and remembers Margaret Blon Fel Fotch the Slitheen, her strange fate. He wonders what became of her, and how she navigated her second chance.

He wishes he could find the TARDIS now, after all that's happened. He wishes he could look into its heart and go back to the beginning, to childhood on the Boeshane Peninsula, start all over again and do everything differently this time.

Gray won't leave. He won't leave. He won't die. Owen, Tosh, Ianto won't die. He'll never meet the Doctor. He'll never meet Ianto.

He'll never meet Ianto.

**118 Flute**

Toshiko knows how to play the flute. Owen knows this because there was once an alien in the cells ("_Residents_," his inner Ianto corrects) who responded well to slow classical music and calmed from its bloodthirsty raging. He'd come down to the cells to find her serenading it one morning. She'd shrugged sheepishly and said she'd needed practice. He'd said nothing.

When he finds her the next morning, playing again for the resident, he leaves her to it. The third time he finds her, he sits on the stairs, just out of her line of vision, and listens, eyes closed.

**119 Garden**

Ianto remembers a tree. Remembers a forest fantasyland behind his father's tiny flat. Remembered small creatures speaking to him, playing with him. Remembers refusing to go to them. Remembers the plants could talk and smile, but not like humans. Remembers saving a sapling from the bulldozer men, its young leaves curling around his fingers in thanks as he replanted it in a yard far away from his crushed estate.

He visited the garden until logic got the better of him and the tree's leaves no longer curled around his in thanks, its grown branches no longer bent to meet him.

**120 Anomia**

Ianto is there when Jack appears at his door at night, terrified to sleep in the enclosed tomb that his bunker has become to him.

He is there when Jack breaks down at the realization that he can't remember this or that person or event that he _knows_ occurred, but has no memory of.

And he is there every time to pick up the pieces of rage and sadness and frustration when Jack can't remember a word and has to fight his way around the language foreign-clumsy on his tongue to find it.

Ianto knows that Jack is lost.

**121 Effervescent**

Even just talking to her in the Hub that first day, he felt something sparking and bubbling inside him, an energy he had not felt in a long, long time. The way her lips curled around the cigarette, the strength in her sad eyes, the musical quality of her voice. Energy fizzed inside him, a buzzing in his heart. Warning bells went off inside his head; _No, no, you can't, not after this long, not after all the walls you've put up, don't let her hurt you, you can't, you do this again and you'll break._

But he didn't listen.

**122 Benediction (Double-drabble)**

The Doctor finds Ianto in a drycleaners.

"Jack's a bit careless with his coat," Ianto says, running his hands lovingly over the wool. The Doctor tells him no time, and rushes him, protesting, into the TARDIS.

As they fly through the Vortex, he explains that he's taking Ianto to see an old friend, it's very important. Ianto doesn't ask questions.

He is silent the Doctor takes him to a beautiful temple, silent as the monks bathe him and dress him in dark red robes, silent as he sits through a service and is blessed. Silent as he is led by the Doctor and a monk to a large room. The chamber is ornate and echoing, beautiful and warm and smells of something oh so familiar.

A voice rumbles his name inside his head, and Ianto is awash with familiar sensations of comfort and love. A scent fills his nose, a memory smell of wool and musk and sex and something uniquely alien. So familiar. He looks to the far end of the room, where a head sits blinking at him from its jar, eyes old and sad and full of affection and mirth and very, very familiar.

"Jack?" Ianto asks.

**123 Pentimento**

If you look close enough, you can see the man Mr. Hark used to be. They say his name was Jack Harkness, and before that, Jaiikve Yavel, and before that, Little Jaii. His parents called him that. And then he joined the Time Agency and became the famous Jaiikve. And after that he came to Earth, never to die, and became Jack Harkness, the man who saved Earth. They say he left when he lost everything.

If you look close into Hark's sad, tired eyes, his anguished traveler's face, his false smile, you can see the man he once was.

**124 Rue**

There was too much regret in Owen's life for someone so young. He wasn't even thirty and already he felt like he regretted enough to be an old man. He couldn't go to sleep at night without dreaming of something he wished he could do over.

He hated that he hadn't left his mother earlier; she'd fucked him over, life with her had made him like this. He wished he'd studied harder at uni. He wished more than anything that he'd told Katie he loved her sooner, proposed sooner, loved her more, longer, kept her close.

Regret filled too much of his young life.

**125 Limitless**

Owen hated it. This never ending pain. It had only increased in his living death, and he couldn't stand it.

He could do nothing to relieve the pressure of emotions inside him. He couldn't fight, for fear of being irreparably damaged. He couldn't shag or drink. He couldn't cry. Even that first day when Jack made him hand over his gun and badge, he'd been on the verge of tears that would not come.

He wanted to break himself, to scream to the farthest planet, to reach inside that bullet wound and pull out his own unbeating heart, if it would just stop the pain.

**126 Wishful**

Sometimes, when it's dark, and all he can hear is the whish-whirr-clank of Lisa's respirator and the steady drip of water along the ancient stone walls, Ianto wishes she'd died back there. He wishes _he'd_ died back there. He wishes things weren't so hard or complicated, and that his emotions weren't torn between his love for Lisa and his growing love for his Captain.

He lies in the night, dents of crescent moons pressed into his palms, puddles of nerves in his stomach, his teeth on edge, and wishes for something, anything to change, just so the waiting is over.

**127 Forlorn (Characters are purposefully vague)**

He watches the desolate figure out on the Plass from the CCTV. The man's shoulders are hunched, and he looks wearily up to the stars for a long moment before staring down at his feet again.

He can see from here that the man feels grounded, a sparrow with its wings clipped, a creature tethered to the ground, cement shoes beneath the sea. His face is dark.

He wants to care for the man, tell him he is everything. But he knows it will just weigh him down more, sink him faster.

He doesn't know how to set him free.

**128 Inescapable (Double-drabble)**

When he gets back from the Crucible, you are standing out on the Plass, looking over the bay. A gentle hand on your shoulder tells you he's there, and that he hasn't been inside yet.

"Sorry I had to leave like that."

"It's all right," you answer, even though it really isn't. You know it's impossible for him to stay away from the Doctor, that his leaving you for the stars is inescapable. He pats you again on the shoulder and you stay there on the pier as he enters the Hub. Gwen's gone home to Rhys hours ago. You were too weary from the adrenaline finally seeping out of your bones to clean up, and just went to sit out in the fresh, cold air. No dead Daleks up there.

He comes back out some minutes later, white, eyes wide. Faces you. He's seen the wreckage.

"You knew there was a Dalek coming to the Hub and you didn't tell me?" There's fear and fury in his eyes.

"You had to go. You had to."

You let him put his arms around you as you stare out at the water. You won't ever tell him that you know you're second best.

**129 Cessation**

Owen Harper stopped when Katie did.

Yes, he was alive. He was breathing. He was working, crying, grieving. But that's where Owen Harper, _her_ Owen Harper, stopped.

When Jack helped him off the ground, a new Owen Harper fell into place. An Owen with a shield, walls, always looking with a wary and critical eye, always ready with a spiky personality and acidic remarks to keep others at bay.

This was not the Owen she knew. This Owen Harper had been created so that the heart he wore so open and vulnerable in his chest could not be further broken.

**130 Excision (Drabble and a half)**

There was a part of him, back there in the dark, hiding. Sometimes, when it was quiet enough, when he was still enough, he could hear it beeping away in his mind, still functioning. He knew what it was, but refused to admit it. He wanted to cut it out.

It helped him, he knew. He knew he couldn't have half the knowledge he did without it, he couldn't be half as clever if it was gone. It blinked away back there in his brain, filing, organizing, storing.

He'd been chosen for his loyalty, intelligence, eidetic memory and speed of recall. It didn't mean he wanted it.

Torchwood One's emergency archive storage. That's what he was. A section of his mind stuffed full and locked away, brimming with every Torchwood secret there was. It was his burden.

He could feel it. He knew what it was. He wanted to cut it out.

**131 Absolution (Drabble and a half)**

"You want forgiveness?" The voice asks.

If he could incline his head, he would. But he's paralyzed in this between-world and he can't move, so he heaves his walls down and projects the answer to the voice.

_Yes. If I could find it, if I could be absolved, I want it._

It chuckles for a moment, then takes on a tone like an annoyed teenager talking to someone who didn't understand the first time, or the fiftieth.

"You don't need to go looking for it, Jack Harkness. You stopped having to look for it when you hand picked them, before it all changed."

_What do you mean?_

"They forgave you, Jack Harkness. They knew what you were and what you've done and they loved you anyway. They absolved you thousands of years ago. You didn't need to look so far."

A sob of grief and relief catches in his throat.

**132 Memory**

There was something caught there, in his head, like a bit of dust caught in a cobweb in a corner. If only he could grasp it.

He'd lost so many memories over the millions of years and it hurt, badly. He could feel them slipping away. He knew many of them were simply locked in a psychic storeroom too deep and hidden for him to access. But there was one there; its presence felt sweet and warm, old and familiar and he wanted badly to know what it was.

He just wanted a bit of his past, to see the old him again, to feel that happiness and content once more.

**133 Cilice**

Owen wore the necklace like a cilice. Its constant cool metal against his chest, the weight of it, was a constant reminder of things he'd done, people he'd lost, his past. It hurt. And that was the point.

It reminded him of all the things he'd done wrong. Of all the things he'd never done and wished he did. Of all the things he regretted. Of the people he'd lost or pushed away. Of the pain and loneliness and aching. It hurt. And that was the point.

It made him vulnerable and protected at once. It hurt. And that was the point.

**134 Reason**

More than once you've been accused of being wrong, inhuman, incomplete, broken, fragmented. You know this about yourself. You did it on purpose. You have your reasons.

Most people would find it appalling, insulting, impossible. But you have to. You _have_ to. You couldn't survive if you didn't. You'd be empty. You'd be dead inside.

You look into the swirling glass orb containing those too-fragile emotions of yours, the ones you've been hiding away for years so you can survive without breaking completely. Without heartbreak.

You have your reasons. Plenty of them. You don't need to explain yourself to anyone.

**135 Suspicion (Double-drabble)**

Ianto stomped angrily about the Hub. He and Jack had been arguing for weeks, each conflict blending into the next, until all they had between them was anger and suspicion and hurt.

Now Ianto was fuming. Jack had been dozing on his desk when Ianto had come in to ask him something, and he'd just stared blankly as he talked, as if he understood nothing.

Ianto stopped in realization.

"Jack?"

"What?"

Ianto gestured to the Captain's hand. Jack held it out obediently. Ianto took his wrist gently and examined the leather strap.

"English isn't your first language, is it?" he questioned. Jack shook his head. "Do you even understand it without this thing on?"

Jack looked at him, then sighed. "Some. I understand if people talk slowly. I…English is so different from my native language. We have words, concepts, descriptions for things that don't even exist yet, and you have words for things that no longer exist where I grew up. I can't understand it when people speak quickly. I can't understand dialects or thick accents without this," he tapped his Vortex Manipulator. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

"It's…okay." Ianto glanced at him. "Maybe I can help teach you?"

"I'd like that, very much."

**136 Triptych (Drabble and a half)**

Owen sat in his car, black despair heavy in his gut, the ache of loss throbbing through him. Katie was gone, his life was empty, he had nothing left. He didn't want to go on.

Ianto sat in his car, wondering why he felt no grief. It had only been days since Lisa was killed and already he felt lighter, like weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Guilt no longer sat heavy on his chest. He was still angry at the Captain, but part of him felt ready to move on.

Jack sat in his car, body still aching from the three deaths he'd suffered from the lingering gas. He looked over at John's body slumped in the driver's seat, and wished with everything he had that he could go wherever he was, even if it was nothingness. He sighed and straightened his shoulders. He had to carry on.

**137 Lies**

Jack tells lies. Owen and Ianto know this better than anyone. They lie, too. Jack hides behind a mask. Owen and Ianto know this just as well. They too know how to hide behind a mask and keep everyone arm's length or a greater distance away. They know Jack lies to protect himself, and to protect them. They know how the truths can come back to hurt him.

And even when they know the truth, they lie for him, too. To protect him. To protect their Captain from them, and from himself. They lie for him because they love him.

**138 Poetry (Drabble and a half)**

Owen let Ianto in without comment. He got them both a brandy, though he could do nothing with his, and they sat together on the couch in silent companionship. After a while, Owen spoke.

"I'm sorry about…you know…back there…"

"It's alright. I understand."

"Can I show you something?"

Ianto nodded. Gently, Owen pulled the glowing alien message from his pack and held it out. Pink tendrils of energy stretched from it and it began to sing. They both stood, transfixed by its beauty.

"This reminded me that I had something to live for. That there's still life left to live and things left to see. That there's hope."

"_Do not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage against the dying of the light._" Ianto recited, solemn.

Owen nodded, reaching a hand into the luminous waving strands. "It showed me a glimmer of light."

"I'm glad you stayed."

"Me, too."

**139 Transitions**

Ianto slumped into the chair at Gwen's empty workstation and sighed.

"How do you do it?" Owen asked, swivelling his chair to face the Welshman.

"Do what?"

"Constantly switch between being the Hub's general caretaker, his lover, out on the field, his babysitter, his psychiatrist, _our_ psychiatrist, an archivist, his second, and our mediator? How do you do it and not go mad?"

"Survival skill. You learn to deal. It's just another fact of life."

"Yeah, well, it shouldn't be. He should treat you better. You do everything for him."

"Thanks for looking out for me, Owen."

"It's my job."

**140 Mokuso**

Before Tosh died, she and Ianto had been learning Judo together. And with it, the meditative state of mokuso. Ianto already knew a bit about meditation, after the classes in psychic shielding he'd had to take at Torchwood One, and the tests he'd taken after the professor had discovered he had a knack for empathy and a ninety-seven percent on the telepathy test.

Now he sank into the mokuso meditative state. It was usually used to prepare for battle, but tonight, Ianto was not battling any physical form. Tonight he was warring against his own grief and Jack's, his own loss and Jack's, his own guilt and Jack's. He was fighting for them both.

**141 Violin (Double-drabble)**

Gwen was still back at the Hub, and comm links could easily be tapped. They had still had to catch the fuckers and get out without outside interference. Ianto had finally told Jack about his psychic abilities. Jack had grudgingly agreed.

They were communicating telepathically now, and Ianto was inching along a darkening hallway, Jack across the building in another room. Ianto could feel the vastness of Jack's presence in his mind and kept the shields on his emotions tightly sealed. He didn't know if he wanted Jack to see all of him.

_You need to grab the box that was on our tracker and get out of there. I'll follow you in a bit. I'll-_

Suddenly there was nothingness.

_Jack?_

Ianto cast about for Jack's mindspace and found blankness. It was like being in a sensory deprivation chamber. He groped about the nothing for a spark, anything.

_Jack?_

Pain seared through his mind like the violent sudden scraping of violin chords and fire. His body became lightning and he curled in on himself, stifling a groan. Spots danced in front of his eyes.

_Ianto?_

_You died._

_Yes. I'm sorry._

_Is that what it's like? The nothing?_

_Yes._

_I'm sorry._

**142 Unforgettable (Double-drabble)**

Owen will never forget the sensation of warm tears soaking his thin shirt as he held Katie in his arms, crying desperately alongside her as they realized what this meant.

Tosh will never forget the relief she felt when the Captain led hear out into the light and she felt the cool breeze on her skin again, saw sun, heard birds. She will never forget the incredible feeling of freedom.

Gwen will never forget the terror of Suzie's jaded gaze, her pistol shaking in a frightened hand. She'll never forget the frenzied sound of the gun. Or Jack standing, alive again, as she sank to the ground.

Ianto will never forget the prickling of tears behind his eyes as his father called him things he didn't even understand, the feeling of resentment he could feel pouring from his father's tongue. He'll never forget how he was always blamed.

Jack will never forget his feelings for them. He may forget their faces, their names, how they smelled or sounded or tasted, the colour of their eyes. But he will never, ever forget how he felt for them, the emotions that cloaked him when he looked at them. He won't ever forget.

**143 Irreconcilability (Drabble and a half)**

Rhiannon stares at the man on her doorstep. The age and weariness in his eyes wars with the youthfulness of his face and she wonders who he really is.

She doesn't know what to do. She wants to hug him, to keep a hold on him as the last close thing to her brother; she wants to scream at him and hit him, tell him to leave because it's his fault Ianto's gone. She doesn't know which one to act on.

But she can see in his eyes, despite the attempt at impassiveness, that he is broken and hurting, and she can't help but empathize with him. They are connected by their loss. Their only common link is now gone.

She beckons him inside, watching him from the kitchen as he stands there, takes out a pocket watch from his coat, caresses it, smiles sadly, and drops it back inside.

**144 Ephemeral**

You were always aware of the dangers of existence. It came with growing up where you did.

But you never fully grasped it, you were never as hyperaware of it as you are now.

After that first time, you just wanted to hide away and sleep forever, to never let the truth of the fleeting moments of life reach you. You never again wanted to feel that rush of pain as someone left you forever, and you could not follow.

And yet, it continues to happen, and you know you cannot stop it. You know that even your constancy cannot compete with the transience of living.

**145 Diffident**

Tosh peered at him from under her lashes, uncertain. He put a hand on hers and she smiled at him shyly.

"I…uh, thank you."

"For what?"

"Back there. I could hear you. You were thinking, 'Not again. Please, god, not again.' It's…I'm glad someone thinks I'm valuable."

"Tosh, you're the most important part of the team. Without you, they wouldn't be able to do half the things they do."

"Thanks, Ianto."

He patted her hand again. "It's the truth. Believe me. I see how inept they are when you're not around. You're important."

He smiled at her, then pulled her into a hug.

**146 Petulant (Drabble and a half)**

Jack wants to swallow his words the moment they come from his mouth, the moment he sees Ianto's face change from that of apology and sorrow to intense grief and a simmering rage that's probably been there for days.

"Childish? You think I'm being _childish_?" Ianto pokes at his chest with a finger. Jack has to consciously resist flinching. "My two best friends are dead, Jack. They died, not even a month ago. I want to grieve them properly, on my own time. I miss them, like a fucking part of me has been ripped out. It hurts like hell. So don't tell me I'm being childish and don't tell me to lighten up. Leave me alone so I can grieve in peace, if you're not going to be doing it."

He turns, expression dark and clouded, and goes downstairs. Jack sits down heavily, pale with shame and remorse.

**147 Capitulation**

Ianto sees the parallels as soon as Beth steps onto the gantry, alien weapon to Gwen's neck. Lisa flashes in front of his eyes, in place of the woman hosting a sleeper agent.

He can see now that surrender is the only difference between them. Lisa surrendered to the pain, to the Cybermind holding her hostage. Beth refuses to; he can see it in her face, though he cannot hear her words. She's fighting it, she doesn't want to survive long enough to be taken over.

He understands. He will give her mercy when she asks for it. He knows he can do for her what he didn't for his Lisa.

**148 Myopic**

Buroaan, his best friend, was a thin, lanky, freckled kid with slight myopia in his left eye that almost prevented him from joining the army. But he took direction well and never forgot a thing, so they let him.

Jaiikve and Buroaan were the top of their class. They'd met in Old Earth History, bonded over a love for all things old and interesting, and never parted ways.

Then they were captured. Jaiikve hung limp in his chains, wishing history could be changed if it could only stop his friend from screaming in pain, dying, tortured because he was the weak one and they were only trying to break _him_.

**149 Picturesque**

Owen thinks they must make a striking tableau standing there at the top of the hill, the picturesque scenery of Brecon Beacons splayed out behind them, the group standing in a staggered line, Jack's coat billowing heroically behind him. But the dark clouds looming overhead make Owen wary. The dark village before them makes him nervous. And the image of the body they found is seared into the back of his eyelids. He shoves down the fear rising in his gut.

What did they always say about looks being deceiving?

He hopes to hell it's something better this time, easier.

**150 Celestial (Double-drabble)**

It is August 2nd when the Doctor whirls in, grabbing them both by the arm and insisting they come with him. Jack isn't about to refuse, and Ianto isn't about let him out of his sight, so they both board the TARDIS to go to the celestial heavens.

The Doctor is calmer, more gentle, nearly sympathetic as he goes about his work on the spaceship. He has regenerated since Ianto last saw him, but judging by the bow tie, this one is just as wild. Must be another reason, then.

After about an hour of floating in the Vortex, the Doctor swans off to someplace deep inside the TARDIS and it's just Jack and Ianto. Jack presses a button on the console and the doors pop open. Ianto knows about the forcefield, and is unafraid. He stands in front of the open doors, Jack at his back, Time singing before him. It's glorious. Their hands entwine on the doorframe. Ianto feels his chest tighten, and his grip on Jack's hand tightens.

Jack barely twitches when he finally realizes, but Ianto feels it anyway. He's known for about 45 minutes, when the Doctor gave him a sad, dark-eyed look and glanced at Jack in concern.

"Ianto…"

Ianto feels the tears sting his eyes and doesn't wipe them away as they stream down his face. Jack's cheek is heavy on his head; his breath is hot and trembling across his ear.

Ianto smiles through his tears, a bright true grin.

"It's okay, Jack. It's brilliant. _I'm_ brilliant." And he means it.


	4. Chapter 4

**151 Pristine**

The Hub is always spotless. You sometimes wonder how you lived before Ianto was here. You can't really remember. You were still grieving for Katie, you didn't notice or care. Just so long as your stuff got cleaned up.

Ianto cleans compulsively. Washes every mug by hand, scrubs down your autopsy table, stacks and re-stacks piles of papers and folders, sweeps floors that have already been swept. Sometimes you wonder if he doesn't have some kind of disorder, if his PTSD is worse than you initially assessed.

But you're not going to deny him his comfort, and it doesn't really bother you, so long as the Hub is clean.

**152 Motorcycle (Double-drabble)**

Sometimes Ianto would lie down at night and wonder how he got here, how he came to be in love with Jack, of all people.

He remembered Rachel, a cute, plump little blonde girl he'd had a crush on in primary school. She'd kissed him on the cheek once and blushed prettily. Her family had moved to London the next year.

He remembered Tegan, an energetic redhead who'd turned his guts to air and his heart to fire when she roared in beside him on her motorcycle, wide smile splitting her face, invited him to hop on. They'd dated for a few years until she went to America and he departed for London.

He remembered Lisa, beautiful, lovely Lisa. Her strength and determination. Her adoration. Her laughing eyes. The intense look of concentration she got when a piece of text was interesting. The smooth coolness of her skin. The almond smell of her, the sound of her voice.

And now he had Jack. Cute, energetic, sweet at times, sleazy at others, gentle, vulnerable, loving, strong, determined. Smile to die for. More regrets than a man should have. And Ianto loved him more than anyone. More than he could ever remember.

**153 Loquacious**

They're all wary of Gwen when she first comes in. She's too talkative, too inquisitive.

This is a group of people with secrets, secrets of their job and secrets of their personal lives. They don't like prying eyes or ears. They don't take kindly to police or to questions. They don't poke around. They don't ask because they know there's a sore spot waiting there to be prodded. Painful. Everyone bristles. They don't like to talk. This girl is too much. Privacy is their shield, their base.

Privacy is a commodity Torchwood provides in spades. It cannot be taken away.

**154 Yearn**

It's hard to long for something you already have. But that's just what Owen is doing. He sits at the conference table, silent, wishing his coworkers could really _see_ him. See that he is still functioning and feeling. He's only cold to the touch, not to the heart. He wishes to have a team that's loyal and dependable, that trusts each other and leans on each other. And he knows they do that still. But it doesn't seem that way to him.

Then Ianto talks to him while he makes coffee, and he knows he has someone to lean on.

**155 Dystopia**

They're surviving. Even split up, Torchwood is surviving. They're each running their own faction of rebels. Gwen is in Wales, Owen in England, Tosh in Japan and Ianto in Germany. They rarely speak to one another. Yet somehow, runners from other groups always have information on the rest of their team, whether they asked for it or not.

They're surviving. But they're not just surviving in this dystopia. They're fighting back. They're using what they know to rebel. They have to. Torchwood knows they'll all die before this is over. But the fight will go on without them, and that's what's important.

**156 Gallifrey**

Ianto gripped Jack's shoulders with both of his hands, emotion pouring out of him, causing him to give Jack little shakes as he spoke.

"Jack, you _can't_. You can't let him change time like that. You can't. Don't go with him. Don't let him go back."

Jack covered Ianto's hands with his own, leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. He felt terribly sad.

"I know, Ianto. I do. But I understand him. I know how he feels every time he talks about his family or Gallifrey."

Ianto remembered Jack's stories of Boeshane and Gray, sighed, and slowly let go.

**157 Vehement**

It was 10:30 and Owen was still at the Hub, tapping away with his pencil. Ianto wandered in and, for a moment, began cleaning up the autopsy room. Then he stepped over and stood behind Owen.

"I get it, you know."

"Fuck off."

"I do. If you ever…." He trailed off, but Owen knew what he meant. He banged the table forcefully.

"Jesus." he growled, chest aching. "It's like we're having a 'who can fall in love and get their heart broken the most pathetically to women that Torchwood destroys' competition."

"I think we're tied." Ianto muttered drily. "Pint?"

"Please."

**158 Tiger**

They told police it was an escaped tiger from a circus show passing through. Gwen was just glad it wasn't another pitbullfrog. Ianto was just glad it wasn't trying to maul them, that he wasn't dying again, and that it wasn't the end of the world. Jack, as usual, was dead, so he didn't have much to be glad for.

They'd shot it down much faster than they had the pitbullfrog. Now they just had to wait for Jack so they could take it away. Ianto smiled at the fact that even though Jack was dead, his stomach was fine and the sky was clear.

**159 Kalokagathia**

Sometimes Owen hated both of them. He knew why Tosh, and even Gwen, was attracted to him. It was because they were determined to see the good in people, the pretty, light parts of their soul with no damage.

Only he didn't have any of that. They were imagining what he could be, what he might have been had his past been different. But even the parts of him that might have been beautiful had been ruined by his mum or friends or Katie's death or Torchwood.

They were imagining a someone who would never exist and Owen hated it.

**160 Gnathic**

Owen flung himself down in the chair across from Jack's desk.

"He missed you. A lot would be an understatement."

"I'm sure you all missed me."

"We did. But he really missed you."

"Well, of course. It's the jawline. Once seen, always yearned f-"

A fist to the face cut him off, and Owen was leaning over the desk, nose inches away from Jack's.

"Fuck your jawline. He nearly killed himself not eating, not sleeping. He did all the work, picked up the slack you left. Now you go down there and talk to him or I will make _sure_ you won't wake up for at least a week."

**161 Palomnesia **(The line isn't the exact one from All My Sons; I modified it so it'd make sense in the story)

Jack could remember each and every one. The men he lost, the men left, the men he followed and led, the ones he considered friends and the ones he considered equals. He protected all of them. He usually remembered faces, sometimes names, often just an emotion or scent or sound.

But he knew he'd always feel love for them, always want fiercely to protect them, and always they'd leave him.

An Arthur Miller quote often came to the front of his mind during these moments of nostalgia and memory.

_"And I suppose, in the end, they were all my sons."_

**162 Twist (Double drabble)**

The young man hands Jack his final food card for the trip and bows slightly. Jack nods. The boy's been good help, and knowledgeable.

"Thank you…um…" He doesn't know the boys name.

"Ianto," the young man supplies. Jack manages to suppress the twitch of surprise.

"That name lasted this long?"

The young man shrugs, inclining his head in a way that's almost familiar. "There's a story passed down in my family that my thirtieth-great uncle died saving Old Earth from invasion of the Terrible Ones. He had no children himself, so descendents of his sister name at least one child of each generation after him, to memorialize him."

Jack feels his gut twist, feels a clenching ache in his heart. Peering at him again, the boy even _looks_ like Ianto. Jack lets out a shaky breath, and digs in his pocket. He hands the young man a 400 tip. The boy looks at him with wide eyes. Then Jack pulls something else out of his pocket.

"I know there are whispers on this ship that I'm a Traveler. The rumours are correct. I am. And I knew him, that uncle of yours. This is his. Something else for you to pass down."

Ianto is reverent as the red tie is placed in his open palms.

**163 Derelict**

Sometimes Owen feels like a derelict hotel. He's crumbling, dark, falling apart. His head hurts and his heart is broken and rusty and his cries can be heard at night like groans on the wind.

Most people don't want him, don't like him, look at him funny. People come and go, stay briefly. Some come willingly, some are there because he feels affection for them, others stay there when he rescues them, or fails to rescue them. Most leave quickly, like a slice.

What lingers is his emotions for them, their emotions inside him. The brush of them against his heart never goes away.

**164 Cyanotype (Drabble and a half)**

The blueprints to Jack live in a very secret archive in the back of Jack's heart, in the dark of his mind, in the soft focus of blue and wide black pupils of his eyes, in the gentle bow of his lips, in the defeated slump of his shoulders.

Ianto is only privy to the lines and measurements and instructions and geometry very rarely, but when he is, he takes in all he can. He knows he's the one who's had the longest look since the Doctor, maybe even before. Ianto tries.

It's all he can do not to rip the papers out of Jack's heart and head and fill his own mind with the knowledge. Instead, he traces the lines with his fingertips, gentle, understanding, and builds braces and beams, struts and windows and doors with his words and touch and compassionate tenderness in the stillness of the night.

**165 Skinny**

He hates that Gwen's comment rings in his ears for hours afterward. He knows she meant nothing by it, that she didn't know what memories it would dredge up, but he can't stand it.

He can remember the jeers of so many of his mother's boyfriends. "Oh, what a little girly boy!" "So tiny, like a pansy girl!" "Skinny little sissy boy's gonna get the shit beat out of him if he don't man up!"

He shakes his head and tries to block out the memories. They're why he is the way he is. They hurt to dig back up.

**166 Presumptuous**

Sometimes, Rhys felt like Gwen went overboard too often, crossed boundaries without realizing it. He didn't know if it was because she was so passionate, or because she honestly had no idea those boundaries existed. Most of the time he loved her for it, and thought it adorable.

But when she joined Torchwood, suddenly she was high and mighty, a special ops officer instead of just a PC. And suddenly he was a dim-witted sod who could understand nothing but a map and a bit of pub banter. And he couldn't stand it.

He thought it might be their downfall.

**167 Witzelsucht**

On the sixth day, they're still frantically trying to beat the cure out of the alien that poisoned Tosh. Owen's down there right now, menacing the creature, who seems torn between unapologetic laughter and honest fear.

Ianto sits on the couch, an unconscious Tosh's head in his lap, holding her gently.

Jack, who is taking a break from interrogation, leans against a column. Smirking, he looks at the tentacled, antennaed creature onscreen.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I—"

Ianto shuts him up with a vicious glare, hands never ceasing their motions as they card through Tosh's hair.

**168 Gephyrophobia (Double-drabble)**

In the first hundred different deaths, Jack's fear was constant, ever-changing. Each different death brought a different object to fear, a new phobia. Soon, though, he realized it'd never stick, and lost most of his fear.

The one that stayed, though, was bridges. One of his first deaths, he'd been trapped for five days under a collapsed stone bridge, pinned, dying slowly from the pressure and pain and stopped circulation and difficulty breathing. He'd been terrified the whole time, screaming himself hoarse though no one could hear him. Someone had finally passed by, found him weak and witless, and had rescued him.

For years afterward, he was terrified of bridges. More of going under than over them, but they scared him. He shied away from them, preferring instead to cross ravines or rivers on foot or boat. Torchwood thought him crazy.

He knew it was irrational, that he couldn't ever really die. But the pain and fear and panic from that first experience stuck with him for much longer than any others. Somehow, he recognized that the familiar pressure of the stone atop him was too much like the crushing, lonely pressure he felt in the black nothingness of death's maw.

**169 Metamorphosis (Double-drabble)**

When Martha stepped through the rolling cog door of the Hub, it was if everything she'd known had gone through some sort of transformation. She'd been here, once, during that year. But it had been dark and wet and crumbling.

She'd never gotten the chance to meet Gwen. The young woman had been dead by that time. But she remembers the others.

Owen had been weary. Like Tom, he had a doctor's license, and so spent most of his time patching others up. He'd been sad, calm in a detached, exhausted way.

Tosh had been serious and bright. She was constantly working, fingers flying across the keyboard; monitoring, testing, studying. She was the one who had created an algorithm to find the pieces of the gun.

And Ianto had been hard. He was straight-backed and rough-edged, eyes tinged with exhaustion and a grim sadness she had not truly understood. He'd been polite enough with her, but there was a wariness to him, a mission-driven strength within him that made her want to get out of his way.

She knew they'd all died fighting back there. She'd heard their screams. She'd heard Ianto's dying battle cry of Jack's name and known.

**170 Tartan**

When a large man in a red tartan and bushy black beard appears in the doorway of the tourist centre, Ianto knows it's Archie. He grins happily, and buzzes the eccentric man in. He knows about the bizarre emails Owen has exchanged with the leader of Torchwood 2, and he's excited to see this man in person. He knows what Torchwood can do to a person, but Archie seems like he's gotten the pleasant end of the fucked up spectrum, and it would be nice to see something good for a change.

"Jack, Owen, your guest is here!" he calls. Jack grins, Owen grimaces. Ianto smirks.

**171 Illuminate (Drabble and a half)**

He can hear the water running down the walls. The light of the torch in his hand is slowly dimming, despite the use of alien tech-enhanced batteries. It is getting steadily colder and there's no sound. He knows nothing, only that everything suddenly went black and silent while he was down in the archives and that all comms are down. He wishes fiercely that Jack was here.

He finds Tosh's body at the top of the stairs. Her blank eyes are wide with fear, hand stretched toward him. His torchlight is erratic, frantic and dim, lighting up only circular, spotlighted fragments of the scene. Gwen is slumped over her desk, blood trickling off into a small crimson puddle. Owen is in the autopsy room, dead fingers clutched around a ring box Ianto's never seen. The Hub is in lockdown and whatever was here is gone or dead.

He realizes in that moment that he is alone. No one will come.

**172 Spirals (Drabble and a half)**

Ianto always thinks he's managed to drag himself out of the pit, to pull himself up and out and away from it all. He thinks the lonely emptiness he'll feel at night won't be half as bad as the confusion, or the betrayal, or the anger, or the sadness, or the jealousy, or the rejection he'll feel otherwise.

Then Owen's weary, broken voice will beg for him across the telephone wire, or his gentle fingers will tremble visibly as he patches him up and his eyes will never leave him, or Jack's large hands will press down on his shoulders, or his smile will light up the room when Ianto walks in. And Ianto will spiral back down to them, taken, wanting, needed, needing, sucked into the beautiful black of loving them.

**173 Momentum**

He has no idea what this is, this relationship-thing that started when Jack left and has just continued on. He doesn't know why he goes to Owen when he's tired or miserable or sad, he doesn't know why Owen comes to him on nights that he's lonely. He doesn't know what changed to make them constantly support and protect each other, touches to shoulders, waists, hands to make sure the other's okay.

Whatever sort of momentum is keeping them going, keeping them together and feeling, Ianto's going to go with it, because it feels like it should be there, and because with all the inertia of his emotions, he really can't stop.

**174 Stopwatch**

He sat in a canvas tent, shivering from the cold, clicking the top of a stopwatch repeatedly, a rhythmic and comforting action. The bodies of his friends were wrapped in blankets at the far end of the tent and he could do nothing to help them. Now he just waited for the end to come. Owen just wished someone, anyone was here to talk to, instead of the incessant ticking of the watch and the soft sound of snow driving him mad. It was when he glanced at Ianto's body, stiff and emaciated, that he decided.

He stepped out of the tent, spread his arms wide, and screamed.

**175 Finite (Drabble and a half)**

The cold, clear night did nothing to ease his murky mind as he stood at the window, breath steaming white onto the pane. Close calls were always terrifying, always would be, but as he stared out at the stars Jack seemed to so often yearn for in both sleeping and waking hours, he couldn't help but ruminate on the fact that he, and the rest of team, had only a finite number of minutes, hours, years in their life.

"Come to bed." Jack's soft, sleep-laden voice beckoned behind him.

He sighed, the cloud of his breath obscuring the vastness of space for fleeting moments, before disappearing into nothingness in the dim blue-black light of the too-early morning. Closing his eyes, he turned away from the stars, already dead though their light blinked back at him, and joined Jack in the bed that had replaced the one he'd shared with Lisa.

**176 Reprehensible**

As Jack settled into his meager quarters on the ship, he thought back to Gwen's face only hours ago, her pleading eyes as he bid her goodbye. He didn't know why she thought he should be forgiven, where she'd gotten the idea that nothing was his fault.

He was to blame for all of it, for every death, for every one he couldn't save or decided not to save, for every deceased or damaged or retconned innocent. For Estelle, Suzie, Owen, Tosh, Ianto, Steven. His heart hurt. It was all his fault.

There was no one to blame but him.

**177 Vacillate (Drabble and a half)**

It will be Owen who saves the Universe. Of course, he won't know it ever. He'll die before his actions even begin to create some sort of result.

It will happen before he ever knows about Torchwood's existence, when he's still just an A&E doctor in a London hospital, remembering injuries and illnesses and times of death but not faces or names.

A young girl with dark skin and big eyes will come under his care one afternoon, unconscious, beaten up. She'll have no ID and her heart rate will be much too low. Owen will be exhausted, and there will be three other patients waiting for him. She is the least likely to live. He'll waver, split between risk and safety. He will choose risk, and take her in.

Many years later, she will join her parents and lover once more for adventures and saving the Universe. And he'll never know who it was that he saved.

**178 Spiel**

Detective Swanson rolled her eyes and groaned inwardly as Jack Harkness gave her another one of her "Torchwood's business" lectures. She waved him off.

"I know, I know. Go do whatever." He smirked at her and went off, the young man that was practically an extension of himself at his side. She wondered who he was. She'd never met him properly. But she could see from his movements and from Harkness's that they were connected somehow. The younger one handed the Captain items before he ever asked for them, was constantly there when needed, and knew without looking where Harkness was always.

She wouldn't be surprised if they had some sort of alien telepathy implants.

**179 Estuary**

Tosh wondered what Jack's mind was like sometimes. Was it like a library, everything categorized A-Z, from alien species to sexual encounters? No, that was more like Ianto. Was it just jumbled chaos? But that was more like Owen or Gwen.

Maybe it was a bit like a blood stream, or an estuary. Tendrils of stories and information and facts all streaming together into one larger body.

But trying to suss out Jack was difficult and mind-boggling, especially taking his age into account. She wanted to ask so many questions.

It was better to leave it alone. She was best with computers. Jack was Ianto's area of expertise.

**180 Ward**

Jack was the only one who knew.

Jack was the only one who knew that Ianto had never felt the Night Travelers case was closed. That Ianto had felt for that little boy, that Ianto had some deep hurt that could be healed through the young survivor.

He was the only who knew that Ianto payed for all his needs, that Ianto visited him regularly, posing as an uncle. He was the only one who knew just how much Ianto's young ward meant to him, how far he'd go to protect the boy. Jack didn't know why, but Ianto needed him to be saved

**181 Sanguine (Double-drabble)**

"Results?" Jack leaned on the railing to the autopsy room. Gwen was just behind him, attentive, and Ianto listened from the computer bay. The doctor was autopsying a young blonde woman. Jack had found her.

Owen sighed and wiped his hands on the front of his scrubs, adding to the blood already staining the thin cloth. Gwen noticed a smear across the side of his neck.

"Yeah, it's a jhytoa. It was nesting. In her parietal lobe. But a tendril managed to burrow down past the brain stem and was working on severing her spinal cord."

He moved to rub across his face, glimpsed the red-stained glove, thought better of it. Jack shifted beside her.

"I'm sorry." Gwen wondered what he was sorry for. This was a routine case.

Owen looked up. His eyes were haunted. Only now she noticed his shaking hands. He stripped off his gloves and rubbed at his forehead, frowning. When he glanced at them again, his expression was darker, broken, eyes disturbed and turned inward. Owen's voice was weary, rough and unfamiliar, and when he spoke Gwen could hear a pain she didn't know or understand.

"Nothing to be sorry for, I didn't know her."

**182 Redintegrate**

Jack frowned as Owen moaned painfully. The young man had a gash along his side that made even Jack wince, two cracked ribs and a sprained wrist.

Owen groaned again, and Jack turned around to check on him, when he realized the young man had finally dropped into a healing slumber. His mouth smiled as his brows frowned. He tended to forget just how _young_ Owen was, and that sparked too many conflicting emotions. But when the Londoner's face smoothed out in a regenerating sleep, it made Jack realize just how few years the man had on him, and how much this life burned away.

**183 Lightning**

Jack starts violently when Gwen puts a hand on his shoulder from behind. Ianto's there in milliseconds, arms around him, lips close, murmuring to him.

"Jack. Jack listen to me. Jack, you're in the Hub. Look. No chains, no steam. The light's white, not orange. Look. He's not here, I am. I'm here. We're all here. Listen. That's the mainframe, not engines. You're safe. You're safe."

Jack's world fades back to reality, Ianto's scent overpowering the memory scent of fear. He calms as Ianto's words begin to make sense. He relaxes.

Realization hits him like lightning.

Pause.

Tension.

"You remember?"

**184 Dichaeologia**

"He started it!" Owen pointed an accusing finger towards Ianto, whose face was innocently blank.

The younger man rolled his eyes. "And I thought you were being childish earlier."

Jack sighed and placed the basketball on the desk. "Come on, you two. Be mature, civilized adults. Stop throwing bits of paper at each other, stop playing monkey-in-the-middle with the pterodactyl, and stop bothering Tosh."

Reprimanded, they cast their gazes down. Jack turned away, satisfied. As he walked off, Owen and Ianto's eyes met, identical grins of mirth and mischievousness on their faces. Owen's hands fluttered toward the basketball. Ianto winked.

**185 Malaika**

Ianto wakes to find Owen gently smoothing the hair back from his forehead. Tosh is sitting cross-legged in front of him, frowning. He sits up.

"What are you two doing here? Where am I?"

"After." Owen answers softly.

"After what?"

"I don't know, just After."

Tosh comes over and pulls him into a hug. Owen's hand is warm on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. Owen's voice echoes the sentiment. Ianto's eyes fill when he realizes what this means. He wipes the tears away.

"I'm glad to see you. I missed you both so much."

They hold him closer. "We know."

**186 Cornflakes (Double-drabble)**

The freighter breakfast offers some weird version of cornflakes and, despite his reluctance to eat, Jack takes it.

_"I'm not a ghost. I had porridge this morning!"_

The flakes are like gravel in his mouth. They cut his gums and grate against his teeth, tearing the roof of his mouth, slicing his tongue. They feel dirty and cold. Sharp, like spears. He eats them anyway, dry.

_"You've done this to me! Dragged me back just to say goodbye!"_

The food settles like stones in his gut. He can feel his soul folding in on itself, slipping away, sealing away. Collapsing. Lightning of hysteria crackling across his skin, thunder of loss across his mind.

_"You can't die!"_

_"Next best thing. Eternal oblivion."_

Next best thing. Most nights he wishes he'd stayed there.

Next best thing. He hadn't meant to leave him there alone. Next best thing. He'd wanted them to go together. Next best thing. He'd wanted to sacrifice what he could, penance for Ianto and for all the other deaths. It was all his fault.

Next best thing. The stones rip him apart inside.

**187 Yesterday**

Yesterday had been fine. It'd been easy. Just like the rest of the first week with Jack gone. But today had gone horribly, utterly wrong. People had been hurt. People had died. It was all their fault.

Tosh ran wet hands over her face as she tried to relax into the bath. She was too high-strung. They all were, she knew. They were constantly tense, always poised to jump at any sign of anything, always waiting.

Yesterday had been fine. But she could feel the crackle of static in the air and knew that it was all going to spiral downhill.

**188 Pilot**

Ianto's been shot, and Owen is nothing. There's white noise in his ears and a whiteout over his vision and he's not even going into medical autopilot. He's stopped. Ianto's whimpering echoes in his ears.

_He's dying,_ Owen thinks._ He can't being dying. Don't let him die._

"Owen!" Jack's voice is frantic. Owen's paralyzed. His lover is dying, dying, and he can't move.

"Owen…" Ianto's fingers flex, reach toward him, and something snaps. Owen springs forward, grasping that hand tightly, whispering, weeping as Jack takes care of what should be his job but it isn't, it isn't because his job is to comfort his lover who could be gone but he's not. He's not.

**189 Surreptitious**

Owen thinks he's being secretive, quietly slipping out every so often to go smoke outside the tourist centre when Ianto's feeding the residents or making coffee or doing paperwork or whatever.

His assumption is proved wrong, though, when Ianto joins him on one of his 'surreptitious' breaks and pulls out his own pack of cigarettes. They stand together, smoking in cool evening, watching the white clouds drift from their lips, the nicotine buzz soothing stress away. There's a sort of lonely camaraderie here.

"It helps, doesn't it?"

Ianto nods. "Just a little."

Owen hums his agreement. "Just a little."

**190 Malleable**

Jack had always thought he was sturdy, unbreakable, when it came to things like pain and fear. He'd always thought he was made of teflon, or kevlar, and things just slid right off of him or bounced right back.

But he knows, as he wakes up sweaty and panting from yet another screaming terror of that year, that his mind and heart are much more impressionable than he thought.

He realizes that the Master has succeeded, taken what he wanted. He's ripped away the shreds of light and safety in Jack's mind. Only pain exists now. The Master has won.

**191 Kankedort**

Ianto was frozen to the spot, unable to move as the creature bore down on him. He rarely experienced terror like this, or distress fluttering in his belly as he was feeling now. He almost felt silly, that he was reacting this way. He'd seen more terrors than a man could imagine, he'd seen all his friends killed, he'd seen his fiancée turn into a monster.

And yet it was the giant, menacing, fang-toothed creature that too-closely resembled Mr. Blobby that paralyzed him. When hostile aliens looked like even more horrible versions of childhood terrors, that was just too far.

**192 Injustice (Drabble and a half)**

Sometimes Gwen wonders why the others don't agree with her when she complains that Torchwood's restrictions are violating her rights, that she should be allowed to do things or that it's not fair that this person had to be killed or this one had to be retconned or this one had to lose a loved one. She kicks and screams and fights and they all turn away or ignore her.

And then she looks into their eyes and sees the damage there. She looks into the depths of them and sees lost loves and not enough chances. She sees that they have nothing but this life. And suddenly she feels overdressed, under-experienced, different, as she realizes that her coworkers are just as old as she, and yet they have seen and endured more pain and suffering than any one person should be allowed.

And she realizes that she has no right to complain.

**193 Trebuchet (Double-drabble)**

Jack was exhausted. He'd expected a chance to go down to his bunker and sleep, or at least try to before the nightmares came. However, he'd been flung headlong into chaos when John arrived and had been clinging to keep his shredded mind shielded for the time being.

Now, though, he'd checked into a hotel and was joining Ianto in the room they shared. His eyes widened at the vast, soft bed, and he sat down gingerly, passing wondering hands over the covers.

"Jack?" Ianto sat beside him, one hand on his.

Jack had been clutching at the frayed edges of his mind, but it was Ianto who broke open his pain with a slight empathic nudge, which smashed open his shields with all the force of a bolder catapulted into a wooden wall.

"Oh _god_!" Jack ground out. His voice sounded broken, even to him. He curled into himself as the pain and darkness lanced through his mind.

"You're safe, Jack. It's okay. Let it out." Ianto pulled him close, rocking him. "You're all right. Let it go."

Ianto's mind butted up against his, rubbing gently. Jack let his barriers fall with relief, and sagged passively against the Welshman as Ianto began the process of sucking the poison of the last year from his psyche.

**194 Synchronicity (Drabble and a half)**

Owen stared after himself, watching his double staring listlessly out of the window, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. The doppelganger grimaced as if in agony.

"I'm so...broken."

"You didn't come to Torchwood because of the Hoix attack you saw," said his companion. "The Captain recruited you because Katie was killed by an alien in her brain. You were unable to save her and you always blamed yourself."

He stared at the slumped figure before him. This man's eyes were endless depths of pain and tortured sorrow.

"But what about that last place you took me? The one where I never even joined Torchwood?"

"There are many universes, Owen Harper. They are all occurring simultaneously. They are all different. This is just one of many ways your life has played out."

"And what will happen to me- him?"

"He will be killed in the line of duty, and he will embrace it."

**195 Allergy**

"Gwen? You all right?" Jack peered at her as he passed her in the walkway.

Gwen sneezed again, her eyes watering and puffy. She shook her head.

"That last victim had a bunch of birds. I'm allergic to birds."

Owen beckoned her down to the medbay. "You are aware that we're an organization that deals with alien artifacts, right? We do have things that can take away your allergies."

"Really? Oh, I'd kill for these to be gone! Can we try it out?"

"Sure," Jack called over his shoulder. "But they tend to turn you funny colours if you're not careful!"

**196 Asphyxiate (Drabble and a half)**

He knows his grip on sanity has been tenuous at best since he'd found his mother's broken body on the floor of the kitchen on her first week back from Providence Park.

He knows he's always been a bit strange, dark. Always had strange thoughts. _What if I stopped slicing this apple and stabbed the knife through my hand right here, right now? What if I just swerved that little bit to the left through the guardrail? What if I slipped out onto the window ledge?_ They'd always come, unbidden and slightly horrifying, but they'd given him a strange thrill.

He didn't expect to go this far, though. Didn't expect to enjoy the feeling of his leather-clad hands around their throats, their cut-off cries for help or mercy, the smell of their fear overpowering their perfume. He didn't expect the rush of lust and power.

There is rot in his heart, he knows.

**197 Empire**

Yvonne Hartman's reign had crumbled quickly and completely with the arrival of too many enemies and not enough organization. Torchwood London had been woefully unprepared, and the massacre that occurred was brutal. Twenty-seven survivors in all, and four weeks later, only eighteen.

Jack Harkness' fall had been a lot less violent and a lot less obvious. He had been cut down not by Cybermen and Daleks and overconfidence, but by love and guilt and too much pain for any one man to bear. He was crushed by his own loyalty and need. And perhaps worst of all, he never knew it wasn't ever his fault.

**198 Tumblr** (Sorry for the crack. The prompt wouldn't allow for anything else)

Sometimes Gwen's pointless, meaningless website searching turned up some pretty good leads for cases and creatures. She'd found quite a few hidden aliens that way, through internet news and various social networking sites, and used her own skills at online communication to wheedle information from people.

However, some of the time, her online meanderings were more hindering than helpful. Like this blue-toned website which at first had seemed like it might be a jackpot. And then she'd gotten an account. She hadn't risen for days. Ianto dusted around her. They acted like she disappeared. She didn't care.

She had Tumblr.

**199 Sheep**

"Sheep."

"Shut up."

"Sheep."

"Shut _up_."

"Sheep."

"Goddamit, Harkness, if you want to keep that concussion and not turn it into brain damage, I suggest you shut the bloody hell up!"

Jack folded his arms and pouted like a small child, looking out the window at the countryside as it flew by. This time they hadn't encountered any cannibals, only a couple of large purple moose-like aliens who had reacted rather badly to their attempts at negotiation. And now they had also discovered that a concussed Jack was an even more extremely annoying than usual Jack.

"Sheep."

"Jesus _christ_!"

**200 Pluperfect**

As he followed Owen out to the car, Jack wondered just how many times the doctor had had to improvise in the last year, or even in the last few months once the year had reversed.

He wondered if the medic had thought his skills good enough, only to discover new horrors he had to heal, new ways to solve problems, new things to fix in the limited amount of time before the Toclofane came.

He wondered just how far Owen had made it before going mad with grief and stress or being killed by the spheres. Or both.


	5. Chapter 5

**201 Philodox**

The new kid was too quiet for Owen's liking. He slunk about in the shadows, but he didn't seem shy, not at all. There was fire, sharpness and wit that Owen could see behind those observant blue eyes, an opinion and an intelligence beneath silence.

Owen immediately took to prodding the kid with sarcasm, insults, barbs of his own preferred opinion. Of course, Ianto said nothing, just smiled blandly and went on. Until his psychotic cyber-girlfriend got loose.

After, though, Ianto, quiet and unassuming Ianto, starting talking back to him, replying in kind to his snipes and barbs. It satisfied Owen and pleased him greatly, though he tried not to let that show in his voice as they bantered back and forth.

**202 Laodicean (Drabble and a half)**

Gwen had always wondered why Owen never seemed to care about anything. Despite his abilities in the sack, he'd always seemed apathetic about the team to her. He'd always seemed indifferent to anything going on around him.

She'd seen him hurting after Diane, but a few weeks later, it seemed like had completely forgotten.

Now, though, as she watched the CCTV footage Turnmill had given to them, she winced at her heartlessness. She watched Owen's face contorted in fear and rebellion, the way he stopped and calmed, face softening over something Toshiko had said, the sad composed emotion in his voice as he had a one-sided conversation with Toshiko, the obvious affection that seeped in, the assurance of love. And the half-rapturous, half-fearful exclamation as he accepted his demise and the camera faded to static. And she wondered why she had never seen his love and passion before he was gone.

**203 Extemporaneous**

"She asked about you, you know?"

There was no reply, so he went on.

"After I'd regenerated, after everything had calmed down from the Sycorax invasion. When we were in the TARDIS going to New Earth. She asked what happened to you. I-I didn't know what to say. Had to make something up on the spot."

"What did you say?" Jack leaned forward. He didn't miss the flinch and shift backward from his companion.

"That you'd died."

"But you knew I hadn't."

The Doctor sighed regretfully. "She would've made me go back for you, she would've made me find you."

**204 Palingenesis (Double drabble)**

"I came back different. Hollow. Like I'm missing something. And I do not want to be like this."

He doesn't realize until the moment he's walking up to the autopsy bay that he didn't just mean his death less than a day ago. He knows he means everything.

He knows he means coming back from his uncle's funeral when he was nine, knowing that every person that might love or protect him was now gone. He knows he means coming back from his first two months of residence to find his mother had changed all the locks and her phone number. He knows he means the moment he felt his soul crumble and fall to dust as he stared at Katie's open, deceased body on the surgery table.

Suddenly he knows he's been hollow and empty for far too long, and that it really is time to give up his desolate, suffering shell for someone with life and a desire to live.

It fills him with a strange, painful, aching satisfaction and despair to know that he's even too hollow to be dead.

**205 Balisong**

It was the knife that brought everything rushing back. Martha's simple black butterfly knife had glinted in the light at she cut off a piece of gauze. The shine had penetrated his brain, and made the screams of soldiers and civilians and Jack come flooding to the front of his memory. The memory of his teammate's deaths, and Martha meeting up with him to tell him where Jack was and that she'd get them out of this.

He sat down heavily, hands over his face.

"You okay?"

"I will be. I just remembered something. Thank you, Martha."

"For what?"

"Never mind. Just, thanks."

**206 Crosshatch**

They stared together at the crosshatched markings of cell floor. Owen closed his eyes at the soft feeling of Jack's large hand on the back of his head, stroking gently through his hair. He felt protected and strangely comforted that his Captain was here with him, a solid touch in the presence of so much uncertainty and confusion.

And now he was going to lose it all; everything he never realized he might miss.

Neither man mentioned that Owen had never looked at the flecks or felt the bricks before he'd died; he'd spent his time being too wrapped up in his own sorrow.

**207 Gyrovague**

There were tales about her. Martha Jones, the woman who would save the world. The woman who wandered Earth, telling the story of one man, a story of hope. She trekked alone across foreign lands, grateful for aid from anyone who spared it. She told her story to everyone she met.

There were tales about him. Jack Harkness, the man who saved the world. The man whose world was destroyed. He wandered the universe, eyes listless and broken. He told a story of despair and yearning devotion to those who would listen. He reluctantly accepted aid from those who gave. To them he told a story of one man, a story of loss.

**208 Psycholinguistics (Drabble and a half, and a really broad interpretation of the word.)**

They say the world won't end with a bang, but with a whimper.

It had been so long since he'd said it out loud, to anyone. So long. And he couldn't say it now, he couldn't believe that there was a chance of losing. Couldn't do anything for fear of giving up and crying for years. As Ianto choked out his admission, Jack couldn't respond in kind, couldn't help but cling to the shred of belief that they'd get out of this, clutching even as he kissed cooling lips, tears burning hot against his cheeks, chest tight with grief and death, a raw sound of despair pressing against the roof of his mouth. He didn't know how to say it anymore, couldn't give words to the devotion and grief he felt as he watched his lover struggle and still, to the solid emptiness of loneliness he felt as he watched Ianto's eyes go dark.

They say love is watching someone die.

**209 Folie a Deux**

"What's wrong?"

Tosh jumped, quickly closing the window and wiping any expression from her face.

"Nothing."

"Really? Looks like something."

"You. Your not in any records, reports or CCTV footage before two weeks ago. You're not our leader. You don't exist."

Jack had the decency to look offended before a slow smile spread across his face. He shrugged and held up his hands in a '_what can you do?_' gesture.

"What. Are. You."

"I live by feeding off of memories. And you all have such _interesting_ memories, such _unique_ minds. It's delicious. And you _can't_ be allowed to kill me."

His hands descended on her.

**210 Undermanned (Drabble and a half)**

"Come on, come meet the team." Jack beckoned the Doctor to stand with him on the concrete slab. As they descended into the Hub, Jack looked around. Everything was quiet; he could barely even detect the hum of computers.

"Hello? Anyone home?" No answer. He shrugged, turning to his friend. "They're probably out on a case. We'll just have to wait here. No point in going topside again."

"No," a voice responded, accompanied by the cocking of a gun. "No point."

Jack and the Doctor slowly raised their hands and faced the storm-faced Welshman. "Ianto? Where is everyone?"

"Dead." The gun still steady, leveled at the two of them, Ianto approached. "They died two weeks after you left. I was here, directing them. They didn't know what they were walking into. I've been here, by myself, and it's all your fault."

Jack felt the bottom drop out of his world.

**211 Strings**

"Can I tell you something, Maggie?"

She nods. Owen breathes, closes his eyes, grimaces slightly.

"My…my fiancee died. Her name was Katie. She had an alien in her brain, and she died before we could have the wedding."

"What did you do?"

"I just stopped. It was like all the strings holding me up were cut. I stopped living. I was just existing, just wading through fog. I was too sad and lost to do anything. And…I died before I could start living again. It's why I want to help you. Live, I mean. You need to start living."

"I'll try."

**212 Foofaraw (Double drabble)**

Gwen stared down at the team from the gantry, a frown on her face. She didn't get it. She'd been good-naturedly (but honestly) complaining about something Rhys had done, expecting the others to join in or comment or even commiserate, but they had just stared at her blankly, giving her no sympathy.

She jumped as Jack leaned against the rail beside her, a sad smile on his face. He peered down at the three team members working diligently in their own spaces.

"Don't expect them to understand what you experience, Gwen. None of them have ever lived a normal life. I know you think Torchwood broke them, but they were worse when I found them. It's fixed them in more ways than you can imagine. But they don't know a life like yours, they never have."

"And what about you?"

"I lived enough lives. But they've all been marred by something. They were nothing like yours. I don't fully understand it either."

"I'm the odd one out."

He turned to her, and she could see the weary experience in his eyes. "For once, Gwen, be glad of it. You'll never have to understand just how broken the rest of us are."

**213 Mumpsimus**

"Do you even realize you're doing it?"

"Doing what?" Jack frowned, looking up at Ianto. He'd been lost in the papers documenting their last case; fifteen people had died because they weren't fast enough.

"That." Ianto pointed. _Tap-tap-tap-tap_. Jack's index and middle fingers unconsciously drummed out a four-point beat on the table. "You do it whenever you feel like you failed something or that you're not good enough."

_Tap-tap-tap-tap_. Jack pulled his hand away as if he'd been burned.

"You didn't." Ianto's voice was soft. "Fail, I mean. You're not wrong. I know you think you are," he nodded to Jack's hand. "But you're not. You're a good man, Jack."

**214 Anaphylaxis**

He still remembers his first patient. A young girl, peanut allergy, serious anaphylactic shock. Epinephrine was not acting quickly enough, and her heart rate was skyrocketing, her throat so swollen she could hardly breathe. He remembers the surgery, saving her, falling tiredly into a chair when he was done, relieved.

It was because of her, and so many others, that he had finally shown his mum how _not_ useless he was. Proven to her that he was _not_ worthless, not the waste of time her dark, hateful eyes had hissed at him. He had proved how much he was worth.

**215 Oracular**

Sometimes Ianto loved it when Jack talked about the future, when he described some of the fantastic things humanity would do. He loved it when Jack spoke of the things he'd seen, the aliens he'd met. All embellished, of course, but he knew there was quite a bit of truth to those stories.

But then there were the ones that made Jack fall silent, staring into a dark corner of Ianto's bedroom, into distance only in his mind. And Ianto would nuzzle Jack's jaw, pushing his nose under Jack's chin to kiss his throat gently, letting him mourn the future-past, ready with the comfort he knew his captain needed.

**216 Acrasia (Double drabble)**

Alice is almost unsurprised when an energetic man in a blue box appears in her front yard. Almost. Her father had often told her stories of such a man, name of 'Doctor,' who'd whisked him away to other times and worlds.

She _is_ surprised when the man takes her back three years prior, says he has no self-control and can't help doing this, has her go into the reception of Steven's primary school and call him out of class for an "appointment." He whispers in her ear to go spend the day having fun, then slips away quietly.

She nearly cries when Steven bounds happily up to her, cheerful but confused. As they walk out of the school and down the road, he asks "What are we doing?"

"I just wanted to take you out and spend some time with you, that's all." She's forcibly holding back tears, a lump in her throat.

They go for ice cream and play at the park. She pushes him on the swing and watches him run around. Too soon she sees the Doctor a distance away, and knows it's time to go. Back at the school, she pulls Steven close to her, and despite her best efforts, a few tears leak into his hair as she breathes him in.

"Goodbye, baby."

"See you, Ma."

**217 Bangstry (Drabble and a half)**

They've been sitting in the cell for weeks. It's gotten monotonous, enough that they're reduced to sitting in a haze of their own thoughts and memories. Ianto has been thinking about Jack, of course, and then about his sister. He misses them.

He's yanked from his stupor at Owen's raw, harsh scream. He can see him with their captors, straining against the bloodied restraints as the man's precise blade and exact blows bring him more pain than thought possible. Ianto flinches, trying not to retch as the scream changes from pain to agony to something black and inhuman and impossible to process.

It's Jack's fault they're in here, being tortured by a master. And not for any information, either. The man wants to leave their broken and bloody bodies on Jack's doorstep; a cruel calling card from an old friend.

Ianto doesn't think either of them are getting out alive.

**218 Chiliad**

When Owen was a child, he used to sit on the stoop in front of his depressing flat, looking out into the sullen grey streets, and count the beautiful things he knew of. Really, he could only count up to two hundred. It was less of a study in beauty and more of an attempt to be as dissimilar from his mother as he could possibly be.

As he got older, he stopped counting. He stopped caring. He became more like his mum than he cared to admit. Then Katie died and he felt nothing. Then he died.

And he counted again.

And he could count into the thousands.

**219 Drawcansir**

There's a reason Jack doesn't want to be who he was in the past.

He can still remember when he was on the squad, his second foray into battle after his best friend was killed. His superior was a Baram'kif named Galo, who'd run his troops with an iron fist, but loved them as close as sons.

He can still remember when ambush came, and he cared little whether he killed comrade or enemy, running blindly, fighting thoughtlessly, until his blade had sunk into flesh and he'd found himself staring into the dead eyes of his own beloved general.

**220 Expergefaction (Drabble and a half)**

Jack came back with a start, gasping stale, noxious air into his lungs. Already he could feel himself dying again as the poison the 456 had released coursed once more through his renewed veins.

Ianto's body was cold beside his, slumped in a ragdoll position. Sluggishly, Jack moved his lover's heavy limbs into a more comfortable shape, curving protectively around the lifeless body which had once held the soul of someone who had loved him despite all the odds. He pressed his face tight into the back of Ianto's neck, hoping for one last wave of Ianto's scent and found it, fading. He breathed in deeply, ignoring the poison, and memorized the essence of his lover as he sank into death.

**221 Unsparingly**

Three days passed after Jack's disappearance, the tension in the Hub building higher and higher as the silence stretched on.

No one was sure who threw the first strike, but suddenly Ianto and Owen were fighting, dirty scrapping, punching and kicking and biting unmercifully, Ianto's mouth quickly bloody and Owen's fingers crooked and raw.

And then they were sinking to the ground, Ianto's arms tight around Owen, whose shoulders were shaking as he sobbed into the Welshman's ruined shirt, clutching the fabric in his fingers. Ianto's eyes were closed, face a broken grimace.

Neither was sure which one hurt worse.

**222 Gubbertush**

Jack rounded the bend in a full sprint, skidding to a stop only inches from a bearded man looking around with a bewildered expression.

"Did you see someone—"

"Aye. Big, hunched over lad. All tanked up. Growled at me, 'e did. Got fangs like a dog! Oughta get 'em checked up on, ye ask me. Run that way, 'e has." The man pulled his frock coat closer around him and shrugged at Jack. Sometimes Jack liked living in this century. Many people were just too apathetic to question things.

"Much obliged." He took off again in the indicated direction.

**223 Fixation**

You've been obsessed with him for so long, you can't even remember when it started. It's like watching from behind thick glass. You cherish the few smiles he gives you, the far-between kindnesses, the single kiss from Christmas Eve.

Then it changes, and the second and last time he kisses you, his lips are cold and bloodless, and feel strange on yours despite the urgency. And you don't know what to do. So you stand on the other side of the glass and scream and yell and plead to help, but there's nothing you can do. He is nothing. You have nothing.

**224 Tabula Rasa**

Jack leans across the table, voice dark with desperate anger.

"You said the century would turn twice. It has. Where is he?"

She doesn't react to his intensity, simply gazing back at him with those old, old eyes full of Sight.

"I said that I could See him coming. Time around him shifts and shimmers. I cannot be exact."

Jack growls in his throat and sits back. "What am I meant to do? There's no one left."

She pulls a card from her deck and sets it in front of him. The Wheel of Fortune. "You are all that's left. You have a clear slate. Begin anew, create anew, and you will flourish and find him as well."

**225 Anabiosis**

The first time Suzie gets the glove to work, a small orange goldfish gasps back to life. Its mouth works silently, black eyes wide, white-edged gills flapping frantically as it flops about in the palm of her hand. Though it dies again moments later, out of water and out of place, Suzie clings to the spark of life she felt, the gasp of return she watched occur. It's a beautiful thing in this underground world full of horrors and death and darkness, and Suzie _cares_ too much. She needs something to hold on to so this job doesn't kill her, too.

**226 Visagiste**

He was a conman. A makeup artist, a mask-maker, hiding his true self from the world. His deception was a threat, a danger of the worst kind. If his actions were repeated, and they undoubtedly would be, the whole world was at risk and people were going to suffer.

But Jack still would not kill him. He could not execute him, much as he wanted to. Because he knew what it was like to sacrifice everything for love, to devote life to loyalty. The makeup artist, when his mask was wiped away, was simply a traumatized, vulnerable kid who was doing the right thing the wrong way.

**227 Wahala (Drabble and a half)**

He didn't expect them to remember, or to care. Of course he didn't. Jack had too much on his mind and Tosh and Suzie, well, they didn't even know. He didn't expect them to remember, but he couldn't give a shit if he was inconveniencing them, either.

He got sloshed that night, drunkenly wobbled to the cemetery where her headstone was— she wasn't buried there— and sat for hours in the cold. Finally the caretaker found him, half asleep and clutching the grass and gravestone in either hand, and shoved him in the direction of home. When he got home, he sifted through boxes of her stuff until he could barely stay awake, then slumped into bed with her favourite shirt tucked under his head.

In the afternoon, he woke up to two dozen calls from Jack and Tosh about some pig thing in London and didn't care. It was the one month anniversary of Katie's death, and he was going to mourn in peace.

**228 Xesturgy (Drabble and a half)**

Ianto had no idea why he'd ever considered Owen's autopsy/examination table to ever be cold or impersonal. He had just watched a little girl's autopsy through the window of the theatre and had been disgusted by the detached and unfeeling coldness of the examiner as she lay on the polished unfeeling metal.

Now he watched Owen autopsy a human or alien victim, or patch him up, or any of his teammates, and he could see a careful, heartfelt approach to the craft. Owen always thought of his patients first, alive or dead, and tried to give them as much comfort as possible, even in his gruff way. His hands were gentle and calming and steady. His tools, though cold to the touch, were wielded with kindness and purpose. There was love and caring and warmth in the little examination bay, something that victims would not come by outside in the real world. But in Torchwood, everyone cared too much.

**229 Yepsen**

"Jack?"

Two seconds ago, they had all been staring down their guns at the three humanoids.

Now, Jack had sunk to his knees, arms outstretched, hands cupped in a reverent gesture. He gazed up at them with an awe Torchwood had never seen before.

"_Iezn'os_, I welcome you to Old Earth." Jack announced. The three men nodded. "We are Torchwood. We will do whatever we can for you."

When Jack had finished talking quietly to the men, his head bowed in deference, Ianto asked him as they walked toward the Hub, "Who were those men?"

"They're the rulers of the planetary system Boeshane is in. They're the leaders of my home."

**230 Zoilist**

People tend to think that Owen just loves to find the wrong and bad in everything. That he's angry and bitter and pessimistic.

But Owen knew once the beauty in the world. Then it all came crashing down. And really, it's not that he loves to find the negatives. It's just that now, with his life like this, it's hard to see the light through the filter of darkness.

And more than ever, it's hard to see the light within himself. Everyone doubts him, everyone yells at him, everyone shits on him, everyone thinks him stupid and laddish and barbed. He can't see past the fact that he can't do _anything _right, and no one expects him to because _he's nothing_.

**231 Flambuginous**

A mask is mailed to him his second day of employment with Torchwood Three. Ianto stares at it; the mask grins emptily back.

He feels eyes on his back staring through his mask and shield as he walks the dim stone corridors and hides behind coffee and suits and politeness. He shivers.

Suzie calls him over to help with the glove one evening. No one else is around, and when he looks into her face as they stand side by side, he sees the blank maddened grin of the mask staring back at him, knowing.

She never says a word.

**232 Gloze**

Just a little scribble in the corner of a document. That was Ianto's first clue. The second came from another paper documenting the reprimand of an unnamed agent for sexual misconduct.

The scribble, though, caught his interest, and he searched for more of the familiar writing. In the margins, corners and backs of so many old and crumbling pages was Jack's writing, going far, far back. And Ianto was smart. By the time Lisa was discovered, by the time betrayal was inevitable, he knew. He knew and he couldn't think whether he was angry or grateful that the Captain was one thing he would never lose.

**233 Hogenhine (Drabble and a half)**

He wasn't ashamed of his mother, not at all. Not like his father was. His father had gone from her side as soon as she had left her mind. She was his mam, though, and she'd been in his life until he was ten, and he wasn't going to throw that away.

But he could only visit her at night, or when she was asleep. He would sit in a chair and sing soft lullabies to her, or read from her books of poetry, or simply sit in the dark and stare at the curled shape on the bed.

He could only visit her when he could not see her eyes. For when he looked into her eyes, he could see himself falling, collapsing, crumbling. He glimpsed the yawning darkness, the swirling universe of half-formed convoluted thoughts and unreasonable terrors inside her. He could see what he would someday become.

**234 Inahiloquent (Drabble and a half)**

This is your problem. Around Gwen's new workmates, you have no idea how to act. You run off at the mouth because, well, the handsome American makes you nervous. You've seen the way Gwen looks at him.

The only other Welshman in the group— Ianto, his name is— smiles at you. He seems to understand. Maybe Captain America makes him nervous, too.

You just don't know what to say. They're so professional, so efficient. You don't know what's going on, and you wish they'd just stop and explain. You're not an idiot. You pick information up fast. And really, they have no right to treat you like a complete dolt. You've helped them once. You could help them again. You know you're smart and capable and quick.

And Gwen, maybe she'll change back to the sweet girl she used to be, instead of the hard, seasoned liar you know she's become.

**235 Jentation**

Breakfast is a nearly foreign concept to most Torchwood members. Specific meals in generally, really. Practically living underground can seriously mess up your concept of time. And anyway, it's not like there's a rigid schedule. Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you can, play when there's time, and fight when it's needed.

One might call Torchwood's ways a bit savage, but it's not. It's simply survival. Very few members of Torchwood function well in normal society. The chaos underground works for them. They're already messy and broken. Going out won't fix them, not ever.

Gwen is the only one who surfaces intact.

**236 Kemspeckle**

Really, Ianto had no idea why Torchwood even thought they were a secret organization. He'd heard of Torchwood long before he ever joined London. All of Cardiff and the surrounding areas talked about it. Any strange goings-on, and they blamed Torchwood.

Besides, not only did their leader dress like a prize-winning costume partier, they had the name of their organization stamped, pasted, and engraved on nearly every possible surface. It was really quite impossible to miss.

Ianto supposed the good thing was that the city seemed to be totally distracted, and had no idea just how many times they'd been saved from incredible danger.

**237 Lopeholt**

_Oh god oh god oh god_

The whirring behind her gets louder. She keeps running, her side burning, her pack bouncing heavy against her spine. She's sweating too much in her black fatigues and her shirt is sticking to her back.

A shout from her left, a familiar accent for once, and she knows it's what she wants. She swerves, leaps, and ducks into a darkened doorway, blockade slamming closed just in time. The whirring zooms past.

"Hello, Martha Jones."

"You're English."

"Welsh, actually. I'm Ianto Jones. I'm an employee of Jack's."

"Pleased to meet you, Ianto. Where am I?"

"Someplace safe."

She sighs. "Thank god."

**238 Mundation**

After everything was over, he went down to the showers. Ianto didn't follow— he just stood there, staring after him, looking lost and worried.

He stood under the water for hours. He felt numb. The water changed from hot to cold to hot again many times, and he felt nothing. It pounded against him, scraping off layers of skin and he could still feel the dirt closing in on him, the sweat clinging to his skin, the ice crystals and spittle and the dank sticky residue of his brother's betrayal all over.

He didn't think he'd ever be clean again.

**239 Nocency (Based on smallwaldo's fic ****_PTSD)_**

Jack writes Ianto's Letter. At first, he writes it to be nearly impersonal, a notification so the others can write their own Letters. But he crumples that one up, throws it across the room. Pen goes to paper.

By the time he's done, he's spilled his heart and Ianto's life onto the page, his guilt and the Welshman's bravery and love flood the words. It's his fault Ianto died, it's his duty to write the memorial. Ianto had wondered who would write his Letter for him. Jack was the answer to that question. Another survivor, gone. One more Letter sent.

**240 Oultrepreu**

She doesn't know whether to love him or hate him sometimes. He's so strong for her. He loves her. It's just so fucked up.

But he's so brave. He pulled her from the wreckage, cared for her in that horrible basement flat for four months before sneaking her to Cardiff. He joined Torchwood Cardiff despite his PTSD and fears. He braves the Captain every night. Braves the whole team every day. He keeps his secret safe.

She can feel it eating away at her mind, taking it in pieces. She doesn't want it to. She begs him to kill her. He can't. He isn't brave enough.

**241 Pelmatogram**

They were there when he stepped into Jack's office the night after he left. Shoes. Big ones for him to fill. Footprints for him to walk upon.

He'd always wanted to be like Jack. Always. He'd looked up to Jack since the night he'd brought him to the Hub and told him that he could maybe make a difference here, that he could be saved. Owen had always respected Jack for his leadership, wished he could be like him. But looking up to Jack and _being_ Jack were two different things.

There were footprints to follow. And he wasn't ready.

**242 Quagswag (Drabble and a half)**

Owen found out early, during one of his first Weevil hunts. He'd been on plenty before, but that had been with both Jack and Tosh. This time, Tosh was stuck at home with a cold.

The Weevil had sent them on a wild goose chase across Pontcanna and through Bute Park. Jack had wandered a few yards away when it hit him side-on. Owen had frozen, and the Weevil had grabbed Jack in its jaws at the junction between neck and shoulder and _shaken_.

Jack had collapsed, and died quite quickly once Owen had shot the Weevil in the head four times and then sprayed it for good measure. Owen had never questioned, never asked. It didn't seem his place at the time. And then he'd forgotten about it.

So when Jack was dead, really dead after Abadon, it had devastated him. Somewhere in his secret heart, he'd believed Jack would live again.

**243 Resistentialism**

It wasn't hard to believe that the Doctor hated him. Not really. He knew he was denying it, deluding himself. He could remember nights when he'd stare down at the bubbling jar that held his Doctor detector, the only fragment he had left.

Sometimes the hand made a claw. Like it was desperate to get out. Sometimes it shook angrily, like it was furious with what he'd done. Sometimes it was as if it was pointing at him, accusing him, hating him. He wondered if it despised him for caging it.

It really wasn't that hard to believe the Doctor hated him.

**244 Selcouth**

When it happens, when it starts, he barely notices it. It's been there for as long as he's worked for Torchwood. He's always had a better memory than most, always been rather OCD.

When he blacks out, it gets his attention. He nearly crashes his car. He calls Owen.

Tests show something there, in his head, expanding. Not organic. Owen rushes away and Ianto can hear him retching into the bin in the other room. He comes out looking determined.

Something is wrong. Some strange thing inside him is malfunctioning. It's only a matter of time before everything gets worse.

**245 Tutoyant**

"Owen?"

"Katie?"

"What's going on?" He feels snug, like he's wrapped in a warm blanket in the dark. Her smell surrounds him.

"It's all right. This is where we all go. To join again."

Her arms are around him, her lips on his. He sinks into her. Darkness. Time doesn't matter. Time doesn't exist. Time goes by. Time is still.

"Ianto?"

"Lisa?"

She covers half of him, tucked against his side. Her smell swirls in his head. He smiles. Dimness. Time.

"Jack?"

"Ianto?"

He is surrounded, warmth pools within him. Affection blankets him. Lips cover his own. He smiles. Darkness.

**246 Ubiation**

She didn't choose the flat, of course. Jack did. UNIT had made him. It was close to the Hub, and apparently Jack had done his research, because it was everything she loved.

He dropped her off there, presenting her the key like it was a trophy, which perhaps it was.

"Enjoy, Toshiko. You're free now. Know that."

She nodded once, shyly, and he drove off. She entered the flat, and spent a good two hours running her hands over the walls, the pre-furnished sofa and bed and dresser and desk. This was hers, her own. Her new home. She was free.

**247 Grapeshot**

"What is that?"

"It's a grapeshot ray. Or, at least, that's what you'd call it in English."

"And that is?"

Jack hefted the device to demonstrate. "It shoots out a cluster of energy balls that are packed together. As they leave the gun, they spread out and capture whatever's there when they land."

"That's something we can use, right?" Owen asked.

"Bit of a problem." Ianto spoke up. He gestured to the gun in Jack's hands. "One of these is documented in the archives. The energy balls explode whatever they capture in about ten seconds."

"_Not_ something we can use, then."

**248 Mislove (Drabble and a half)**

Ianto walks. He's not supposed to. He's supposed to stay in the hotel until time is unknotted. He walks.

His mind is a knot. His stomach is a knot. His muscles are a knot. He keeps walking.

"Get in." Jack's beside him in the flashy sports car. He does.

"You're not supposed to be out." Ianto doesn't respond. "You okay?"

"Fine."

"Look, Ianto, I just want everything back to normal. I know how you…feel. I want to prove to you that you can trust me. I want to come back to you being there for me again. I missed that while I was away."

Ianto stares. They stop at a light. He looks ahead again.

"Things aren't going to go back to normal. I love you, Jack. But I am _not_ _yours_."

Ianto won't let himself be owned or kept. There's silence the rest of the drive to the hotel.

**249 Roshambo**

It really isn't mature. Ianto knows that, and he knows Owen's perfectly aware. But this is Torchwood, and as whole, Torchwood's members have quite the record of being exactly what they're _not_ supposed to be.

They really shouldn't stop in the middle of firing and fighting and defending the earth and ro-sham-bo for the killshot to this alien's head, but they've been keeping score and they really aren't mature enough to have grown past this, no matter how much Ianto may sigh and complain about Owen's childishness. Owen loses and sticks his tongue out at him as Ianto turns to fire.

**250 Abrogate**

Jack's first act of the head of Torchwood, besides putting his colleagues' bodies away, was to modify the rulebook. Get rid of the whole "number one enemy: Doctor" business, toss out the bits about killing everything, erase the No Sleeping With Your Coworkers rule.

Not that he had anyone to sleep with. But he liked his options open, and he didn't mind if his staff had theirs open too. He knew ill-advised affairs would undoubtedly happen. He also knew that if there were no rules against them, they were much more likely to end on at least a civil note.


End file.
